


Nothing But The Truth

by MadameCissy



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Blake & JJ, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:06:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameCissy/pseuds/MadameCissy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: A case where the secrets they kept got three people killed brings the team to Boston. When the unsub focuses on the team and targets one member specifically they realise that they can no longer keep secrets from each other. They have to be honest in an effort to catch the unsub and keep each other safe and for two people this has some far reaching consequences. ..</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Criminal Minds or any of its characters. I just borrow them, use them and will put them back when I'm done.

**Chapter 1**

_There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.  
~George Bernard Shaw_

****

She was buttoning up her pants when she heard her cell phone ring. She'd left it on her bedside table and grabbed it the when it bleeped again. The screen was lit up with the announcement of a message from Penelope Garcia and her finger slid across the screen to open it. Round table in thirty.

She turned to the bed and quickly pulled the covers straight. The sheets had been a mess when she woke up and now that she pulled the dark purple comforter back in place and picked up the cushions she had put on the floor the night before her gaze lingered a little longer on the side of the bed that had been empty when she woke. She picked up the pillow and as she plumped it up she could smell the faint hint of shampoo left behind. A smile graced her lips as she put the pillow back in place.

JJ then turned to the mirror that hung on her bedroom wall, ran her fingers through her blonde hair and opted for a quick ponytail instead of trying to work with her stubborn blonde locks this morning before slipping her cell phone into the pocket of her black slacks. She tucked her shirt in, grabbed her blazer of the bed and picked up the dirty clothes she had left in the corner of the room the night before.

As she went to put them in the hamper she noticed there were already a few items of clothing at the bottom and the smile on her face widened as she dropped her clothes on top. She then walked across the room and unlocked the safe that was hidden inside her closet to take out her gun and badge. She clipped both to her belt and then walked out of the bedroom and into the room across the hall, switching off the bathroom light as she passed by.

"You ready, buddy?" she asked her son.

Henry turned around with a huge smile on his face. He was dressed in his favourite jeans, sneakers and a blue long sleeved shirt with a beach themed picture on it. "Ready, mommy."

"Did you brush your teeth?"

"Yes."

"Washed your hands?"

He nodded and his blue eyes were bright. "Yes."

"Cool," JJ smiled as she scooped her son up and blew raspberry kisses into his hair. Henry giggled and screamed as he squirmed in his mother's arms. His feet hit her in the stomach but she ignored the sharp pain, opting to just put her son down instead. "Remember auntie Jessie promised she would make you pancakes this morning before taking you to nursery?"

"Pancakes!" he cheered.

"Go grab your bag," JJ encouraged him and watched as her son ran back across his room and took the small Thomas & Friends rug sack. He put it on and turned around to his mother with a beaming smile. JJ felt her heart swell with pride at her son's happiness. With his blonde hair and blue eyes he was almost a carbon copy of her. When he ran back towards her and grabbed her hand, she heaved a sigh.

"Ok, big man. Time to go."

She locked the door to her apartment behind her and put the keys in her purse. Henry clung to her hand and waited patiently alongside her for the elevator. They stepped inside once the doors opened and listened to the catchy, albeit somewhat annoying, jingle that played on the speakers. A few seconds later the doors slid back open and JJ and Henry walked out of the apartment building.

She dropped Henry off at Jessie's place. She was a friend she'd gotten to know when she took her baby classes not long after Henry was born and she'd been fantastic in looking after Henry when she started work again. If she was called into work, Jessie could always accommodate Henry. Her son was five days younger than he was and the kids were the best of friends. As far as Henry was concerned, Logan was his brother.

After leaving Jessie's place JJ joined the crappy morning commute to Quantico. She wasn't a fan of this route but it was the best she could do right now. She listened to the newsreader on the radio announcing that the economy was on its way back up before mentioning last night's sports results and she smiled to herself when she heard the Redskins had won. After that the music kicked back in and she drummed along on her wheel to the latest hits.

She drove through her favourite Starbucks drive-thru, ordered a triple latte and smiled at the girl behind the window who handed her the cup. She continued her journey through the traffic and eventually pulled into the parking lot of the FBI building in Quantico. She found a bay closest to the entrance and got out. The sound of a car pulling up a couple of bays down to the right made her turn around.

She watched as Morgan got out of his car and waited for him.

"Morning," he greeted her as he caught up and held the door for her. JJ smiled in thanks.

"Good morning to you too," he answered and didn't miss the glint in her eye. "You're exceptionally bright for a Monday morning."

"You know me," JJ grinned. "Always smiling."

They took the elevator up to the BAU bullpen together and when they stepped out they ran into Rossi and Hotch walking in the direction of their meeting room. They joined them and when they walked in found that Reid, Blake and Garcia were already present. JJ's eyes met Blake's across the room for a moment before slipping into an empty seat next to Morgan and picking up her tablet.

She could feel eyes resting on her and when she looked back up she noticed Blake still looking at her. When the brunette's lips curled up into a smile JJ couldn't help but smile in return. It was but a fleeting moment that was gone long before anyone would ever have noticed.

"Sorry for the early morning call," Garcia said as she opened up her tablet and tapped a couple of the pictures on her screen. They appeared on the larger screen behind her and three different headshots of three different people jumped up. Two were female, the last one was male. All were white but all looked different.

"You're off to Boston, Massachusetts because there is something seriously creepy going on up there," Garcia began and three more pictures appeared. This time of they were of bodies and the pictures had been taken at the crime scene. Each crime scene looked like it was in a forest, with leaves covering the ground and low hanging tree branches in all shots. "Karen Jenkins, Samantha Lewis and David Oldman were all found like this."

"They were all strangled," Rossi noticed and he sat up, intrigued by the crime scene photos. "The bruising around the beck is quite specific. And they're all naked."

"Stripping them off their clothing could point at a sexual motive," Reid suggested. "Or he is humiliating them, exposing them for the whole world to see."

Hotch nodded. "All autopsy reports confirm that the victims were strangled with bare hands. Clear finger-marks could be seen on the necks and in all three cases the hyoid bone was broken."

"Strangling someone with bare hands is intensely personal," JJ mused. "It involves getting really close to someone and literally feeling them take their last breath, watching the life fade in their eyes." She looked up from the tablet in front of her and back at the pictures on the screen. "This was personal."

"Is there any connection between these three victims?" Alex asked.

"Karen was a hairdresser, Samantha an IT consultant and Dave was in his last year as BCU," Hotch answered. "If their personal lives crossed, it didn't happen during their time spent at school or at work. There is no indication these three knew each other."

"So the killer chose them at random," Reid concluded. "But why? At first glance they appear to have nothing in common other than that they're all white. Karen's a blonde, Samantha's a redhead. Serial killers who cross the gender lines are incredibly rare. Most serial killers stick to one gender." He leaned back into his chair. "What would drive someone to kill both men and women?"

Morgan studied the three photos. "Something other than gender ties these people together. There has got to be some kind of connection we're not seeing."

Reid looked at him. "They all lived in different parts of town and their bodies were all found in public parks less than five miles from where they disappeared. There doesn't appear to be anything that connects them to each other and it seems that the unsub doesn't have a particular comfort zone, choosing to go back to where he found his victims instead."

"There is one more thing," Garcia said and the rest of the conversation fell quiet. She briefly looked at Hotch and he gave a quick nod, encouraging her to carry on.

"During the autopsies, the medical examiner discovered the number six burnt into each of the victim's left shoulder," Garcia continued and she pulled up three more photos. Her stomach dropped a little when she saw the burnt flesh and the bright red number on their flesh.

Hotch looked at the profilers sitting around the table. He could see the wheels turning in their heads now that this piece of information was added to what they already knew. "According to the ME they were all burnt antemortem."

"What does the number six mean?" Morgan wondered out loud.

"It could be an obsessive compulsive trait," JJ suggested and looked around the table to see most of the others nodded in recognition. "We've seen numbers used that way before."

"All three bodies were found within less than two weeks which means he's killing regularly," Rossi noticed as she checked the estimated time of deaths for all three victims and the dates the bodies were found. He had started to notice a pattern. "David Oldman was found three days ago."

"Which means it won't be long before he kills another one," Hotch said. "Wheels up in thirty."

They gathered their belongings and left the meeting room. It didn't take them long to grab their go-bags. They all kept them under their desks, always expecting the next trip, and the team of profilers left the bullpen within minutes. They all stepped into the elevator and JJ felt her hand brush against Blake's. She didn't make eye contact and focused instead on the doors slowly closing.

Half an hour later the Bureau's jet was up in the air and had set course for Boston. The team had found themselves a seat and various files lay spread out across the table. Before they left Hotch had printed off the full copy of all three autopsy reports and Reid was now studying the details.

"How long between them going missing and the bodies being found?" Blake asked him.

"Karen was reported missing by her husband on the Monday when she didn't come home from work. Her body was found early Wednesday by a jogger morning but the ME put time of death sometime on the Tuesday," Reid answered.

"So he doesn't keep them for a long time," JJ said. She chewed the inside of her cheek. "He doesn't seem to take these victims for his personal gain. If there was any kind of sexual gratification involved we would have seen signs of that. None of the victims were sexually assaulted."

"So if it's not his own gratification he's after then what is he trying to do?" Rossi interjected.

"He could be trying to send a message," Morgan suggested. "Leaving the victims naked strips them of their identity, it leaves them vulnerable and exposed to the world. Those are all things nobody likes to feel and posing a body in such a way suggests he's trying to tell us something."

"But's he's not leaving any clear signs as to what that message is," Hotch pointed out. "He doesn't take care of the bodies after he's killed them. There's no sign of remorse. He strips them off their clothing and then leaves them naked in a place where he knows somebody will easily find them."

"The bodies had been washed though," Reid piped up and several sets of eyes snapped in his direction. "The ME notes no trace DNA was found on the bodies, No hair, no fibres and in all cases the hair was still wet, suggesting they had been bathed or washed only shortly before he disposed of the bodies."

Alex ran her fingers through her hair and looked back at the crime scene photos in front of her. The victim's empty eyes stared back up at her, their skin pale and in some places beginning to turn blue. The purple bruises around their neck were a sharp contrast against the pale tone of their skin. "Bathing could be an attempt to get rid of evidence or he could be trying to cleanse the bodies."

"What would the reasons for cleansing be?" JJ asked.

"Anything from perceiving the victims as dirty to trying to symbolically wash their sins away," Morgan replied. He looked around the small aircraft. "We need to look at their personal lives and find out why the unsub picked them. At first glance there is nothing that ties these strangers together but there has got to be something that made them stand out."

"There is always something that ties strangers together," Rossi ominously cut in. "If you look deep enough."

"Ok," Hotch said. "When we get to Boston Reid and Morgan go check out the crime scenes, JJ and Blake will talk to the families and Rossi and I will visit the Medical Examiner's office.

David Oldman's body hasn't been released for funeral yet."

JJ glanced at Blake. She had felt the brunette's eyes rest on her but now that she turned to look at her, Blake turned the other way. JJ bit back her sigh and picked up the folder with the photos that lay on the table in front of her. She could feel the plane begin its descend into Boston and it wouldn't be long before they were back on solid ground. As she glanced out of the window she noticed the grey skies. It looked like the weather in Boston was about to be as crap as the weather they left behind.

~()~

An hour later they had picked up the three black SUV's loaned to them by the Boston FBI Field Office and the team split into three to follow up their various leads. Morgan and Reid were the first to leave the police station where they had met up with the Lieutenant in charge. JJ and Alex were next whilst Hotch and Rossi were about to take the third car and drive to the medical examiner's office.

When they reached the car and Blake unlocked it, her eyes briefly met JJ's. "Did everything go alright this morning?"

"Yeah," JJ smiled, feeling an unexpected blush creep onto her cheeks. "I don't think he even noticed."

Blake climbed into the vehicle. "Good."

JJ took a deep breath before getting into the passenger seat and buckled up. She put her hands in her lap and watched as Blake put on her own seat belt before switching on the radio. The silence between them lasted for several more seconds before JJ spoke again. The tension was rising. It seemed that in moments like this, neither of them quite knew how to handle themselves.

"Listen, Alex, you could have asked Rossi or Hotch to come with you," she suggested. "You don't have to do this with me if you don't want to."

"I'm fine," Blake insisted as she turned the engine. Her brown eyes found JJ's blue ones and she briefly put her hand on the blonde's knee. "Really."

"Ok," JJ said, biting back a comment that would have destroyed the moment between them. She took her cell phone from her pocket and opened up the maps. A red dot indicated that the satellite had picked up her GPS. "Where do their families live?"

"Karen's fiancé lives up in Beacon Hill, David Oldman's father lives in Charlestown and Samantha's parents live in Jamaica Plain," Alex replied. "Which one do you want to hit first?"

"I don't know," JJ answered, casting a sideways glance at Blake. "You decide."

Blake nodded, pulled back her hand that had been resting on JJ's knee and put the car into he gear. The absence of her touch almost immediately left JJ feeling cold and she averted her eyes as Blake drove off the parking lot and joined the traffic that was heading in the direction of Charlestown.


	2. Chapter 2

Six hours of talking to grieving families had drained her. She would never get used to seeing the devastation in people’s eyes as they spoke of their loved ones. There would never be a time where the hurt and the pain made her heart die a little bit inside. Leaving those families behind didn’t mean she left the grief behind. Somehow the weight of it always rested on her shoulders until the moment she could give those families the answers to all their questions; only then could a person begin to heal.   
  
JJ leaned back into the pillows of her comfortable hotel bed. The room was spacious and bright and the window overlooked a small courtyard with an oak tree and wooden benches. The walls had been painted in a simple magnolia and the sheets were crisp and white. A small desk stood under the window with enough room for a laptop. A designer lamp had been placed on the bedside table and cast a soft golden glow of light into the room. The TV was on but she wasn’t really watching. It was just a noise in the background; a mechanism to force out the silence.   
  
There was a part of working with the BAU that made it feel like the loneliest job in the world. The nights spent in hotels across the country, a different state almost every week, made that she often felt like there was nothing else left out there other than this kind of life. In the hours after saying goodbye to the rest of the team once they had left the restaurant and reached the lobby of the hotel and the moment she met them again she had spent many nights with just her own thoughts for company, trying to erase some of the scenes she saw every day long enough so she could sleep.   
  
JJ looked up when there was a soft knock on her door. Her eyes briefly darted to the clock beside her bed. 23.14. She slipped off the bed, padded across the room and peered through the small peephole before opening the door. A smile spread across her lips as she met the eyes of the person standing outside.   
  
“Reid finally left?” she asked, stepping aside to let Blake in.   
  
The older woman grinned as she filed past JJ into the hotel room. “I thought he was going to keep talking till morning,” she answered as she dropped the bag she’d been carrying over her shoulder at the end of the bed. She turned around to find JJ closing and locking the door.   
  
JJ looked at Blake. Although she had spent many nights alone, there had also been many where she had shared the darkness of the night with her. She closed the distance between them and skipped her arms around the brunette’s neck before burying her face in her hair. Blake’s arms closed around JJ’s lower back and she held her.   
  
“I’m glad you’re here, Alex,” JJ whispered, her lips lost somewhere between Blake’s hair and her ear.   
  
Blake swallowed hard, her hand slowly sliding up until she found JJ’s long blonde hair. She let a strand slide through her fingers. It was such a simple touch but it meant more than either of them could describe. “Me too.”   
  
JJ slowly stepped away from Blake and pointed at the bed. The sheets had been pulled back where she had been sitting up to watch the TV. The pillows were propped up against the headboard. “I warmed up your side.”   
  
Blake smiled and unzipped her bag to take out the shorts and tank top she slept in. “Thanks.” JJ watched as the brunette walked around the bed, unzipped her slacks as she did so. Blake stepped out of them, allowing JJ a brief glimpse of the simple yet elegant white panties she wore underneath. She then began unbuttoning her blouse and let the fabric slide down her arms. JJ’s eyes trailed over the toned shoulders and muscled arms before lingering a little while on the white bra that covered Blake’s breasts. Her stomach did a double flip as the older woman unhooked her bra. Blake changed into her grey shorts and black tank top before climbing into bed and looking up to find JJ still watching her.   
  
She tilted her head a little and her brown eyes narrowed. “What?” she wanted to know. “Why are you looking at me like that?”   
  
“How long have we been doing this?” JJ asked as she too climbed into the bed.   
  
“Five months, two weeks and four days.”   
  
JJ chuckled. “You always have to take things literally, don’t you?”   
  
“Must be Reid rubbing off on me.”   
  
Blake’s smile remained firmly in place as she draped her arm across the blonde’s stomach and moved closer. JJ rested her head against the older woman’s shoulder. “What’re you thinking, JJ?”   
  
“Why didn’t we ever tell them?” JJ wondered.   
  
Blake didn’t answer immediately. Truth be told, this hadn’t been something either she or JJ had planned to happen. Somehow all of life’s circumstances had brought them to the same point and from that moment on things had changed. Neither of them had ever mentioned sharing the change in their relationship with the rest of the team and Blake didn’t think they knew. From the beginning she and JJ had established clear boundaries that they wouldn’t cross. The main one was that they would keep their work and their personal lives as private as possible.   
  
There was an agreement between them all as profilers; they would never profile each other and each other’s personal lives. Whatever they wanted to share they shared but nobody crossed that invisible line. Of course they noticed when something was wrong; their intuition was more finely tuned that that of others but at the same time they had all perfected their poker face. If they didn’t want anybody to know, nobody knew.   
  
“I don’t know,” she answered in all honesty. She turned her head so she could look at JJ. “I guess we both decided it was better this way?”   
  
“Yeah,” JJ sighed. She paused for a moment, focusing solely on the sound of Blake breathing. She’d never before realised just how comforting that sound really was. It slowly erased the anxiety she felt bubbling underneath her skin. “I meant what I said earlier this morning, by the way. I don’t think Henry noticed you leaving.”   
  
They had another rule. Henry didn’t know Blake would spend the night at her place three nights a week when they were in DC. Blake would arrive after he was asleep and left before woke. It had worked so far but this morning Henry had been particularly early and had stormed into his mother’s bedroom, in all his enthusiasm just as Blake was in the bathroom. It had taken all of her strength to persuade her son to go back to his room and play with his toys while Blake left the apartment.   
  
Blake took a deep breath. “Good,” she answered. “I know it would be difficult to have to explain it to him, JJ. He’s still so little.”   
  
“It’s not that I don’t think he won’t understand. It’s….” JJ’s voice faded and Blake held her a little tighter, softly pressing a kiss on her hair.   
  
“I understand.” Blake tenderly let her fingers ghost across JJ’s arms. “You’re worried about what he might say to Will if he saw me.”   
  
“He’s still having a hard time dealing with it,” JJ sighed. “It’s been three months but he still doesn’t seem to accept that me filing the divorce papers is for real. He still hasn’t signed them.”   
  
“You think he knows?”   
  
“That there’s someone else? I don’t know.”   
  
JJ’s eyes closed as she remembered the evening she’d told Will she wanted to end their marriage. She’d seen it coming for some time and although she had tried to make things work, they were never going to be the way they were. He’d stared at her with empty eyes and there and then she knew he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.   
  
“Do you think we should tell them?” Blake asked softly as she leaned over JJ’s end of the bed to turn off the light. The room was suddenly covered in darkness.   
  
“No,” JJ whispered, her lips pressing against the pulse point in Blake’s night. “Let’s not.” She smiled and Blake could feel it against her skin. “Good night, Alex.”   
  
Blake released the breath she’d been holding and relished in the feeling of JJ ‘s body against her own. “Good night, JJ.”   
  


~()~ 

JJ woke early the next morning. It was a natural instinct. Henry always woke early and ever since having him she struggled to sleep any later than six o’clock. Her eyes opened slowly and she familiarised herself with the surroundings of her hotel room. The sheets felt comfortable against her skin and the feeling of a warm body curled up against her own brought a smile to her face. She snuggled a little deeper into Blake, drawing a soft moan from the older woman’s throat.

“I’m gonna grab a shower,” JJ whispered into Blake’s ear and slipped out from under the sheets. Blake didn’t move. She’d learnt months ago that unlike herself Blake wasn’t much of a morning person.

She walked to the bathroom, stripped out of her black pyjama pants and took off her oversized Red Skins t-shirt. She switched on the shower and stepped under the hot flow of water. She sighed in relief and comfort when the warm water rained down on her head, neck and shoulders and she tilted her head back, rinsing the sleep out of her eyes. Fifteen minutes later she stepped out from under the water, used one of the standard issue white hotel towels to wrap around her body and a second one to wrap around her head. Drops of water still glistened on her skin as she walked back into the bedroom and found Blake in the middle of the bed, sprawled out on her stomach, brown hair covering her face.

“Alex,” JJ whispered as she carefully let her fingers slip under Blake’s tank top and caressed the bottom of her spine, “C’mon! We promised we’d meet the others for breakfast at seven.”

Blake didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t even stir when she felt JJ touch her. “I don’t need breakfast.”

JJ was about to answer when there was a knock on her door. Her head whopped around and at the same time Blake sat up, her brown eyes wide open. The blonde profiler looked back at Blake and their gazes locked. From outside the door a voice called out to JJ.

“JJ, its Reid. Have you seen Blake?!!”

JJ looked back at Blake. “Get in the bathroom. Now.”

Blake got up, rushed to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. JJ slipped off the bed and tentatively walked to the door. She opened it slightly, enough for Reid to see she had only just got out of the shower. He seemed taken aback.

“Hey,” she smiled. “What did you say?” “Have you seen Blake?” Reid repeated his earlier question. “I went by her room but she didn’t answer the door.”

“No, haven’t seen her,” JJ answered without so much as a hesitation. “Maybe’s she’s gone for a morning run?” She eyed up the youngest member of their team. Reid looked a little forlorn. “What’s wrong?”

“Something Blake said last night got me thinking,” Reid replied. “She mentioned something about the number six and its meaning. In numerology the number six is associated with positivity like care, being selfless and a deep love for home and family. At the same time it has a negative meaning; a superiority complex, being weak willed and selfishness. The number six also features in the Bible. There it’s associated with the weakness of man, manifestation of sin and the evils of Satan. In its triple form, the number 666 is associated with the Antichrist.”

JJ looked at Reid. “Did you actually sleep last night?”

“No.” He didn’t even blink.

“Ok,” she said, jerking her head to indicate this wasn’t the right time to talk about this. “Why don’t we discuss this over breakfast?” He nodded and disappeared down the corridor. JJ closed the door and let her breath escape.

The bathroom door opened and Blake appeared. When she saw JJ leaning against the door she couldn’t help but smile. They both looked a little bit startled but relieved at the same time. Blake walked across the room and planted a kiss on JJ’s forehead. “Maybe we should tell them,” she smiled. “This is getting awkward and ridiculous. We’re grown women, we should’ have to sneak around like this.”

“Yeah,” JJ said, resting her head against Blake’s shoulder. “Maybe we should.”

Blake stepped away and disappeared into the bathroom for a second time. A minute later the shower was switched on and JJ fell back onto the bed as she listened to the sounds of her lover in the other room. By the time Blake came back out of the shower JJ was already dressed. Blake grabbed a clean set of clothes, brushed her hair and bound it in a ponytail before picking up her bag. They left JJ’s room together but when JJ went downstairs to meet the team for breakfast, Blake returned to her own room. This was how they always handled their stays in a hotel. They never appeared for breakfast or a morning meeting together. She sighed as she left the bag on the chair by the window and joined the group twenty minutes after JJ had done.

By that time Reid had already told them what he had told JJ that morning and they were speculating about possible connections to their unsub. As she slipped into her seat and poured herself a cup of coffee,

Blake looked around the table. “Samantha’s family mentioned that she hadn’t been in touch in the weeks before her death,” she said. “She used to call them once a week but then her behaviour changed.” Morgan sat up in his seat. “Did they say why?”

“Only that it looked like she’d broken up with her boyfriend and didn’t tell them,” JJ answered. “According to her mother, they were together for four years but then she ran into him at the grocery store and he told her that Samantha had moved out a few weeks earlier. That’s when she stopped calling her parents.”

Blake sipped from her coffee. “Karen’s fiancé mentioned a similar change in her behaviour. They were quite the homely typed. According to him they were the kind who stayed in every weekend to watch movies together. But then she started working late, became withdrawn. When he asked her what was going on she snapped at him.” She looked around the table. “He never quite said it out loud but I think he thought she was seeing someone else.”

Hotch picked up his phone and dialled a familiar number.

“Speak and be heard, my lovelies.” Garcia sounded bright.

“Garcia, can you dive into our three victims’ backgrounds for us? Social media, bank accounts, cell phones and text messages?” Hotch asked and could hear the technical analyst’s fingers fly across her keyboard in the background. “Look for anything in recent weeks that could have triggered a change in their behaviour.”

“Also look for signs they were trying to mask these changes,” JJ added, briefly meeting Hotch’s eyes and getting his approval when he nodded. “Maybe they got another phone, changed their routines. Check for any purchases on their credit cards, something that doesn’t add up. Track their recent journeys via GPS, see if they did anything different.”

“So you want me to stalk their lives,” Garcia answered. “Dig up the dirt. Find the gossip. See if any of them did something, or someone, they shouldn’t be doing.”

Morgan grinned at the chirpy undertone. “Do what you do best, baby girl.”

Rossi’s cell phone rang and he picked up to answer. From the way his face fell the others guessed it wasn’t good news. He barely spoke and when he hung up he looked around the table. “Boston PD just received a missing person’s report for Katrina McKenzie, aged 23. She was supposed to meet up with her sister last night and never arrived,” he said. “When police went to check they found yesterday’s paper on her doormat. Turns out she never showed up for work yesterday morning.”

“And her co-workers didn’t raise the alarm?” Reid questioned, arching his eyebrows in surprise. Rossi sighed. “Sometimes she worked from home. When she didn’t show they just assumed that was what she was doing.” “If he took her yesterday then we’re running out of time,” JJ said with a hint of sadness in her voice.

“Garcia, did you hear what we just said?” Hotch asked.

“Every word, sir.”

“Make Katrina McKenzie your priority.”

“Yes, sir,” Garcia answered. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Blake leant back. “What’s our next move?”

“Same as yesterday,” Hotch answered. “Talk to her family, find out if there have been any changes in her behaviour recently. All these victims are of the low risk category. Something draws this unsub to them.”

“What about the possibility that he’s stalking them?” JJ suggested. “There are a few days between a body being found and the next victim being taken. What if he uses that time to single out his next target, decides who he wants next? All victims were taken in crowded places. This suggests he’s brazen and not afraid to be seen but also that he’s confident. He would only be this confident is he knows his victims well.”

“The changes in their behaviour,” Morgan reminded them. “What if they are connected to the unsub?”

“You mean like they knew he was stalking them and that’s what changed their routine?&rdquo

; Morgan nodded. “Or the change of their routine is the reason he’s stalking them.” “It takes time to get to know someone well enough to notice something in their routine has changed. Maybe JJ’s right about the stalking. The unsub would have to come close enough to know about the changes,” said Reid. “But he won’t be able to get to know someone this intimately in just a couple of days.”

JJ sat up. “He has a list.” “What do you mean?” “He’s already chosen his victims,” she clarified and her blue eyes drifted around the table, meeting the gazes of every other team member including Blake. “How else would he be able to find someone who’s recently changed something about their routine so fast? He singled them out long before he kidnapped them. It’s like a tick list and he’s working his way down.”

Rossi looked at the blonde profiler and said out loud what everybody else was thinking. “So how do you find the next person on this list? Greater Boston is home to more than seven million people and each of them could be a potential victim.”


	3. Chapter 3

Blake and JJ got out of the black SUV and quietly walked up to the front door. JJ knocked ad pushed her hands into the pocket of her slacks. She shot Blake a sideways glance. The older woman looked lost in her thought and didn’t notice JJ looking at her. Before she could ask her what was wrong however, the door opened and a young woman appeared. She had curly blonde hair and blue eyes. A simple quick glance told JJ she had been crying.

“Angelina McKenzie?” she asked and the woman nodded. “I’m SSA Jareau and this is SSA Blake, we’re with the FBI.” Her eyes held the woman’s gaze. “Can we come in?”

“This is about Katrina, isn’t it?” Angelina asked and JJ nodded.

She stepped aside and let the two agents into her home. Blake was the last one to enter and closed the door behind them. They now stood in a brightly lit hallway with a high ceiling and shiny wooden floors. The sound of their footsteps echoed through the quiet house as she and JJ followed Angelina into the living room. They sat down next to each other on the couch and JJ folded her hands in her lap.

“Do you know anything yet?” Angelina asked. The tremor in her voice betrayed her fear.

“What can you tell us about your sister?” Blake wanted to know, keeping her voice soft and warm. Her brown eyes were fixed on the woman sitting in the arm chair by the window. The grief and the hurt were etched across her face. “What kind of person was she?”

“The kind of person everyone wanted to be around. Wherever she went, people just instantly seemed to like her,” Angela said quietly.

“Was she seeing anyone?”

“No one in particular. She always said she wasn’t the type to settle down. At least, not yet. You know, the whole marriage and kids thing wasn’t quite what she had in mind,” Angelina replied and gestured around the living room. Toys had been neatly stacked up in the corner. “But she loved spending time with Eden and Jake.”

“Did you notice anything different about your sister recently?” JJ brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Something that you think wasn’t quite like her?”

Angelina frowned and there was a silence. “For the last few weeks she seemed a little more upbeat than normal,” she said slowly. “She was always quite happy but this time it was different.” She looked up to Blake, meeting the brunette’s gaze. “You know that feeling that tells you something’s off?” When Blake nodded she carried on. “She mentioned this guy she’d been seeing a few weeks ago. It was the first time she ever mentioned any of them by name. He took her all these fancy hotels and expensive shops. Something told me that it was almost too good to be true.”

JJ sat up. “Do you remember his name?”

“Stephen,” Katrina answered. “Stephen Nicholson.” Her breath hitched and the fear in her eyes became even more evident. “The papers… they’ve been talking about these people.. the ones that have been found naked in the parks…” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Do you… do you think he took her?”

“We don’t know this for sure,” Blake answered, choosing to neither confirm nor deny the stories that had appeared in the local papers. She knew people were talking about this case on the streets. “But we have to explore every option. Did Katrina ever say anything about someone who may have paid her a little too much attention? Phone calls, emails? Someone who may have been following her?”

“She said she’d had a few hang up calls. Nothing scary, just an unknown number calling her and then hanging up.”

“Did she say when this started?” JJ asked.

“Three or four weeks ago. She said she thought it was some guy she’d met in a bar. She gave him her number and they went out on a date but didn’t hit it off. She said she didn’t want to see him again so she thought it was just him trying to scare her.”

Blake chewed the inside of her cheek as a clearer picture began to form in her head. “Thank you,” she said after looking at JJ. The younger profiler had nodded in an understanding. They were ready to leave. Blake reached into her pocket and pulled out her card. She held Angelina’s gaze. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”  
“Thank you.”

Angelina followed the two FBI Agents back to the front door and saw them out. “Agent Blake?” she called just before they reached the car and Blake turned around. “Do you think my sister is still alive?”

Blake knew there was a good chance Katrina had already been killed but the last thing Angelina needed to hear was that. She heaved a sigh and averted her eyes, feeling the burden of giving hope when there was little to none to give weigh heavy on her shoulders. “Yes,” she answered. “And we’re going to do everything we can to find her.”

Once Angelina had closed the door, JJ took her cell phone out of her pocket and dialled Garcia’s number. The technical analyst answered with a bright and cheery voice and JJ put the phone on speaker.

“What can I do for the most beautiful lady in the BAU”?”

JJ grinned and glanced at Blake. The older woman smiled. “What can you tell me about a Stephen Nicholson?”

Garcia’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Stephen Nicholson, forty-three years old. Works for a large software company in Boston, lives in Beacon Hill.” She whistled through her teeth as more information began to fill her computer screen. “Looks like this guy means serious business.”

JJ arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“He’s got bank accounts everywhere, including off shore ones. House has recently been renovated top to bottom and his kids go the most expensive private school in the State of Massachusetts.”

Alex’s ears pricked up. “Did you say kids?”

“Yep. Boy and a girl. He even managed to reproduce perfectly. Boy is 10, girl is 8.”

“Is he married?”

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner,” Garcia answered. “He’s been married for fifteen years.”

JJ looked at Blake. “I bet he didn’t mention his wife to Katrina.” Blake shook her head. “Thanks, Garcia.” She hung up and sighed. “So Katrina was seeing a married man. If our unsub was stalking her, he would have known that. It could be the reason the targeted her.”

“Angelina picked up on that change in her behaviour. All families have mentioned something similar,” Blake mused. She stepped closer to JJ and her hand came to a rest on the blonde’s arm. Now that they were alone she could show the affection she couldn’t show at any other time of the day. “What if that’s the common denominator between our victims?”

“We need to dig deeper into our victims’ lives and find out what it was that made them change,” JJ answered and let her fingers ghost across the back of Blake’s hand. Their gazes locked and her lips curled up into a smile. “Let’s get back to the precinct. Maybe the others will have found something and if they haven’t, I’m sure Garcia has.”  
Blake let her hand slip off JJ’s arm and circled the SUV to get into the driver’s seat. JJ climbed into the passenger side and buckled up. She then turned to look at Blake and found the older woman looking back at her. JJ smiled and covered Blake’s hand with her own as sje put the car into the gear and left the house behind.

~()~

Twenty-five minutes later they walked into the precinct and found the rest of the team sitting around the table in the incident room. JJ and Blake slipped into the two empty seats and Hotch looked up. His cell phone lay in the middle of the table and the screen was lit up. From where she sat JJ could see Garcia’s name flashing across the screen.

“What did you get?” he wanted to know.

“Katrina was apparently seeing a married man,” JJ pointed out. “Her sister Angelina told us that ever since she started seeing this guy, her behaviour had changed. We’re not certain if Katrina knew he was married. If she did, she definitely didn’t tell her sister.”

“This ties in with what we’ve discovered about the other three victims,” Reid said and Blake looked in his direction. “Garcia, tell JJ and Blake what you’ve just told us.”  
“I had a look at Karen Jenkins’ finances and boy, they are a mess,” Garcia answered. “I found three maxed out credit cards and she and her fiancé were several months behind on their mortgage payments. There are large sums of money going out but nowhere near as much going in. I can trace all of these transactions back to two different casinos. I also found a second cell phone with text and calls to what looks like her bookie.”

Blake heaved a sigh. “She was gambling...”

“And never told her fiancé,” Morgan finished her sentence. “The guy looked devastated when we told him. Her gambling has ruined him financially and he didn’t even know. I think it would have been easier for him to accept if she had been cheating on him.”

“Samantha Lewis broke up with her boyfriend without telling anyone in her family. She stopped calling and her parents hadn’t heard from her in weeks,” Reid continued. “Garcia found some evidence that suggests she’s been having numerous affairs and has recently been working as a high end call girl.” There was a pause. “She kept this life a secret from everybody else around her.”

Blake began to see the pattern. “What about David Oldman?”

“Senior at BCU,” Rossi answered. “I spoke to his father and he mentioned his son had always been athletic but when I checked with his friends at BCU, they said he hadn’t played in months.” He picked up the file in front of him and opened it. “Analysis of a hair, urine and blood sample all indicates a prolonged use of cocaine. David was an addict. According to the dean he was about to be kicked out.”

“So all our victims had a dark side, a secret they didn’t share with their families,” Hotch said. “How did our unsub find out about them? Where did their paths cross?”  
“I’m beginning to think JJ’s stalking theory might be right,” Reid said. “And the number six makes sense too.”

“You mean like the weakness of man?” Blake asked.

Reid nodded. “I think the unsub may be obsessed with the number. It’s why he leaves it on the bodies, because of what it symbolises to him. The meaning of the number is the main reasoning for his killing. It describes all the flaws that are characterised by our unsub.” His eyes narrowed. “I think he goes looking for people who fit that image in his head. The ones who keep a secret, the ones who sin, the ones who show weakness. Gambling, cheating and drug abuse…”

The mention of the secret keeping made JJ shift uncomfortably in her chair. She could feel Blake’s eyes on her but didn’t look up.

“But how does anyone find another person who fits that picture?” Morgan wondered. “There are millions of people living in Boston. If JJ is right and our unsub has a list of targets, he must have spent a long time finding them.”

“He is highly intelligent. He has to be to pull this off,” Reid replied. “Some people possess almost like a sixth sense to be able to tell when people are lying to them. This guy may very well have wondered the streets and come across his victims randomly but once he’s picked up on the fact they’re hiding something from someone else, he follows them. He figures out their routine. He stalks them, gets to know them. He marks them with the number six, the number that drives him, and he works his way down his list.”

“Everyone’s got secrets,” Blake said, slowly tearing her eyes away from JJ. She had noticed the blonde moving in her chair. The mention of secrets didn’t leave her untouched and Blake couldn’t deny that she felt a knot in her own stomach too. “How does this unsub decide which ones people are allowed to keep and which ones are the ones they deserve to die for?”

“It could be influenced by something he went through in his own life,” Rossi suggested. “Prostitution and drug addictions can really scar a child if he sees these things. The cheating element of that could be connected to the prostitution.”

“He would have needed time to perfect himself,” Hotch said. “A guy like this doesn’t just randomly start killing people. Garcia, start looking into people who may have been arrested for stalking in the past. Charges of voyeurism, assault and so on.”

“Do you have any idea how long that list is in a city the size of Boston?” Garcia asked and her fingers flew across the keyboard. A long list of names appeared on her screen and she shook her head, a shudder creeping down her spine. “If you ask me, there’s a pervert living on every block.”

“Take out any stalking charges related to ex-lovers,” Reid suggested. “This guy seems to focus on strangers. Most likely he started off that way too.”

“This list is still way too long.”

“How many?”

“Too many.”

JJ sat up and folded her hands on the table. “Cross reference the names on the list to people who may have been arrested for prostitution or drugs. Check for parents.”

“This is going to take some time,” Garcia said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Hotch glanced at his watch. “The unsub took Katrina McKenzie thirty-six to forty-eight hours ago.” His eyes scanned the table. “Time’s running out.”

They all stood up and went their separate ways. JJ didn’t make eye contact with everyone and left the incident room. She walked around the squad room where the Boston PD officers were all working. Phones were ringing and people were talking but none of the sounds really reached her. She walked down the corridor and eventually into the ladies room. The door closed behind her and JJ placed both her hands on the side of the sink and stared at her own reflection.

Her phone vibrated and she checked the caller ID. It was Will. She didn’t answer and put the phone down on the sink. It continued to vibrate and the sound was getting on her nerves. When it eventually silenced the released the breath she’d been holding.

She felt like she had done when she and Blake first crossed the line of friendship. It hadn’t been something she was looking for. She knew Blake hadn’t been looking for it either. It had just happened and although she had always told people she didn’t believe something like that could actually happen, she believed it now. It had rocked her world. It had changed her, changed everything around her too.

Her relationship with Will had been bad for some time. They kept trying to work things out, fit the pieces back into place, but a broken marriage was like a broken piece of glass; you could put the pieces back together but you would always be able to see the cracks. The long hours, the days on end she spent away from home… He never liked her job, didn’t approve of it. When the moment came where he asked her to choose she knew they had reached the end. It had been inevitable. She had seen it coming for some time.  
By then she’d been seeing Blake for almost two months. Two months in which they didn’t talk about her marriage, about the life she led away from the BAU or Blake’s bedroom. They didn’t ask questions that went beyond nights shared in hotel rooms across the country. Stolen glances and distant smiles had become the story of her life and it wasn’t until Will asked her to choose between their marriage and her job and she appeared on Blake’s doorstep at three in the morning that they realised there was no going back from this.

The door opened and JJ saw Blake’s reflection in the mirror. The older woman softly closed the door and walked across the small space to reach JJ.

“Hey,” she said, running her fingers along the blonde’s jawline. She could see the tears in JJ’ eyes. “You ok?”

“Yeah.” JJ swallowed. “It’s just all that talk about secrets and stuff, you know?”

Blake nodded. “I know.” She placed a soft kiss on JJ’s forehead. “As soon as this case is over, we’ll tell them.”

“What about Will?” JJ sighed. “He still hasn’t signed the papers, Alex.” She pointed at her phone. “He just called. He knows I’m in Boston. I texted him this morning to pick Henry up from Jessie’s place.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Blake whispered and smiled when JJ rested her head against her shoulder. “We’ve done alright so far.”

She looked down at JJ. Some days she still couldn’t grasp that this woman had become part of her life in such a major way. When she first started working with the BAU she couldn’t have imagined things would change so much. Not even two years later and the life she had when she started with the team and the life she had now were a world of difference. Having JJ, sharing some of the moments with her, was something she cherished more than anything else in this world.

It was a surprise, falling for another woman. Falling for one she had been working with for some time was perhaps an even greater surprise. Some things couldn’t be explained and, even if they could, were perhaps best not to.

Blake wrapped her arms around JJ a little tighter and rested her head against that of the blonde.

“Alex?” JJ asked softly.

“Hmmm?”

“When we get back to DC, I want Henry to meet you.”

“Ok,” Blake whispered. “Ok.”

There was a knock on the door and the two women looked up when they heard Rossi outside. “JJ, Blake! Hotch wants to see us back in the incident room.”

JJ stepped away from Blake and smiled. “I guess we’re going back to work, eh?”

Blake nodded and started for the door. Just before opening it she turned back around and looked at JJ. “Everything’s going to be OK,” she promised. “Trust me.”


	4. Chapter 4

As she walked into the incident room JJ could feel that whatever Hotch was about to tell them was bad news. Instead of sitting down she leaned against the metal filing cabinet, her warm hands pressed against the cold metal. Blake stood next to her. The close proximity of her body made JJ feel comfortable and safe. She even allowed her hand to brush against Blake’s.

Hotch’s solemn voice filled the room. “Fifteen minutes ago a patrol car found the body of Katrina McKenzie in a local park. She was strangled and the number six was burnt into her shoulder.”

Blake looked down at the floor. Sadness flashed behind her eyes as she remembered the words of comfort and hope she’d spoken to Katrina’s sister earlier that morning. “Shit.”  
The feeling of devastation and loss filled the room. They all knew this could happen, and many times it did happen, but whenever it did, it seemed that a tiny fragment of their own hearts was chipped away too and left to die. JJ felt the burden of guilt and sadness weigh heavy on her shoulders and when she looked at Blake she could see the same emotions on her face too.

“Morgan, Reid, you take the crime scene,” Hotch said and his eyes briefly lingered on JJ and Blake. They had only just returned from speaking to the victim’s sister. “Rossi and I will handle the notification.” Those words made Blake look up. He wasn’t sure if what he saw in her eyes was relief or defiance but she didn’t challenge him. “Blake and JJ; get back in touch with Garcia and see what she’s got.”

The rest of the team left the incident room. Once they were gone Blake released the breath she’d been holding and without warning punched the cabinet JJ had been leaning against. She didn’t flinch but the sudden outburst made the blonde profiler jump and when she looked over her shoulder she noticed several cops in the squad room had looked up too.

“You ok?” JJ asked when she looked back at Blake.

The brunette leant over the table, her hands flat on the surface, palms facing down. Her knuckles were red but not bruised but her body language screamed tension and frustration. JJ very carefully put her hand on the small of Blake’s back and waited for the older woman to look up and make eye contact.

“Sorry,” Blake said softly. She glanced at JJ. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s alright. It happens. The frustration gets to all of us at some point. It’s normal. It’s what makes us human. What wouldn’t be normal is if we didn’t feel these emotions from time to time.”

Blake swallowed. JJ’s hand still rested on her back and the touch was comforting and warm. Right at this moment she would have given everything to be alone with her, to be able to hold her and let go of whatever fear had suddenly possessed her. She stood up, straightened her spine and looked at JJ. Although her smile was forced, the look in her eyes was genuine.

“Better call Garcia,” she said as she took her cell phone from her pocket.

She put the phone on speaker before sliding it down onto the table. Garcia answered before the first ring had even finished.

“Hey Garcia, you’ve got me and JJ,” Blake said as she pulled up a chair and picked up one of the notepads and pens left behind.

“Oh have I got some news for you,” Garcia answered. “That search you sent me on was like a bad treasure hunt but instead of treasures I found a whole lot of creepy perverts.”  
“Any one of those creepy perverts match the description we gave you?” JJ asked.

“I’ve got thirty-five so far.”

JJ chewed her lip. The number was staggeringly high. “Thirty-five?”

“Boston must be a creepy city.”

“Ok,” Blake interjected. “Take out all the non-Caucasian males. All our victims are white and cross race killings are rare.”

“That still leaves twenty-eight.”

“And these are the ones that have a connection to prostitution or alcohol abuse in some way?” JJ asked, feeling slightly worried about the life some of these men must have had when they were growing up. It seemed that with society changing, the depravity was changing too. Children seemed to suffer more these days as drugs and alcohol was readily available to their parents.

“Yep. Each and every one of these guys had one hell of a bad childhood,” Garcia answered. “Neglect, drugs, alcohol, prostitution and abuse. The whole nine yards.” There was a shudder in her voice. “No wonder some of them turn out like this. What kind of chance did they have with parents like that?”

“Do any of them have other criminal records?” Blake asked. She fingered a strand of brown hair around her finger and her eyes seemed to focus on nothing in particular. “Remove anyone who’s got a record for sexual assault or rape. Our unsub doesn’t seem to have any form of sexual connection to his victims. I would almost say he is not interested in any form of sexuality at all.”

JJ shot Blake a sideways glance. The statement was bold. “You think he’s impotent?”

“No, I think he just doesn’t care,” Blake answered. “That’s what allows him to kill across both genders. There is no sexual gratification, which is normally gender linked. Nothing about this seems even remotely erotic or in any other way sexual.” Her eyes narrowed. “This is a long shot but I think our unsub may still be a virgin.”

“Exposure to position could have led to the unsub experiencing conflictions about his sexuality or not experiencing any kind of attraction at all,” JJ suggested. “It may have left him so traumatised that he doesn’t recognise these kinds of feelings. He seems so focused on getting to know these people and their secrets that nothing else matters to him.”

“Taking off all the sickos with abuse of rape charges on their record….” Garcia’s fingers came to a stop and she whistled through her teeth as the list on her screen suddenly reduced in size. “That brings it down to six.”

“What are their ages?” Blake picked up the pen and began scribbling things down on the notepad.

“The eldest is eighteen, the oldest sixty-seven.”

“Rule him out and rule the teenager out too,” JJ answered. “One is too old and the other too young. The amount of skill involved suggests he’s at least over the age of twenty-five but no older than fifty. Kidnapping someone, especially a male, isn’t easy. He would have to be physically fit. He blends in, doesn’t stand out. He’s got a lot of time on his hands that allows him to stalk and observe his victims. Somebody who either works part time in a low key job that he finds unfulfilling or even degrading or someone who doesn’t have a job at all.”

“I still have three,” Garcia answered. There was a hint of excitement in his voice. “That ruled out only one.”

“Send us their details,” Blake asked and at that same moment their phones bleeped and a message announcing an email appeared. She smiled. “Thank you.”

JJ opened the email on her phone and scrolled the list of their three potential suspects. Each name contained a picture and she wondered, as she had done so many times before, whether she was staring down into the face of evil. A picture could never give her that answer. She had learnt that people were skilled at hiding their darkest demons. She’d faced serial killers who were so normal that it frightened her. She also knew that the chances of her passing a serial killer on the street without ever knowing it were high. It was the kind of knowledge she had as a profiler that made her look differently at life and the people around her.

~()~

By the time the rest of the team returned it was dark. The day had felt endlessly long and JJ felt the desperate need for a shower. Morgan and Reid looked defeated as they walked back into the squad room and shared the details of the crime scene with the others. It only added to the already deflated atmosphere in the room and Blake was glad that Hotch and Rossi decided not to tell them how the notification went. She wasn’t sure she wanted the image of a distraught Angelina in her head before going to bed tonight.

“Get some sleep,” Hotch said when he looked around the room. It had been a long two days so far. “We’ll all have fresh minds in the morning.”

He needn’t tell any of them twice. They left the incident room and spread out across the two black SUV’s to drive back to the hotel. As they walked through the squad room they noticed most of the desks were empty too. People had resulted to going home with the hope that a new day would bring them some answers.

Morgan got behind the wheel of the first SUV and Reid got into the passenger side. JJ hopped into the back after sharing a quick look with Blake who opted to climb into the backseat of the SUV driven by Hotch with Rossi in the passenger seat. JJ buckled up and rested her head against the window as Morgan put the car in gear and drove off into the direction of their hotel.

“Does anyone fancy grabbing a bite to eat?” Reid suggested.

JJ shook her head. Her eyes felt heavy and she had a headache. The prospect of sitting in a restaurant and having to eat food whilst listening to people talk seemed like hell on Earth right now. “I’m beat. I’m ordering room service.”

“There’s a burger joint just down the road from the hotel,” Morgan answered and looked at Reid. “I’m in.”

The remainder of their journey was quiet, other than the radio playing softly in the background. It allowed JJ to almost drift off to sleep, her head still resting against the window. She only woke up when Morgan parked the car in the hotel parking lot and her weary eyes snapped open. JJ heaved a sigh as she got out of the SUV and turned around to see the second vehicle pull up next to them.

“Morgan and I are going to grab a burger. Anyone else coming?” Reid asked when Rossi, Hotch and Blake exited the car.

“I think I’m gonna call Jack and say goodnight,” Hotch said and started off into the direction of the hotel main entrance. “I’ll see you guys at breakfast.”

“Blake?” Reid asked and the brunette glanced past him to look at JJ. The blonde shook her head.

“You know what, I’m gonna run myself a bath in my room and pretend I am someplace nice,” Blake answered and Reid looked a little disappointed. She felt bad for turning him down but the look on JJ’s face told her that the blonde needed her company tonight. “Rain check?”

“I never say no to a burger,” Rossi said. “Lead the way.”

The three men disappeared in the direction of the road and Blake and JJ walked into the hotel. In the lobby they looked at each other. JJ looked tired and forlorn, Blake thought. It had been a long time since she’d seen her look this worn out.

“Want me to come up?” Blake asked.

JJ nodded. “Go and get your bag and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

They stepped into the elevator together and Blake wrapped an arm around JJ’s shoulders once the door had closed, pressing a kiss on the blonde profiler’s head. JJ pushed the number one for her floor and the number four for Blake. As she rested against Blake’s shoulder she finally felt some of the tension slip away. The desire to just shower and lay down in Blake’s arms for the rest of the night sounded like the perfect solution and when the elevator doors slid open she almost forgot to get out.

“JJ, this is your floor,” Blake encouraged her, gently pushing her out of the elevator. JJ looked at her with tired blue eyes and Blake smiled. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

JJ watched as the doors closed again and the elevator disappeared. She started down the corridor and when she reached her door she searched in her handbag for the key card. She swore under her breath when all she seemed to find was her phone, her keys, her phone again and a random toy left behind by Henry. When she finally found the key and swiped it through the lock the door opened and JJ stepped into the darkness of her room.

She reached for the light switch but the light never came on. Instead something hard made contact with the side of her head and a sharp pain spread through her body. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and panic overwhelmed her. Her knees buckled and the last thing JJ noticed was that she fell right into another person’s open arms.


	5. Chapter 5

 

The silence was deafening even though the room was full of people. She stood with her hands in her pockets, hidden in away in the corner. It was like a little safety net, away from the madness that was happening around her. She watched as people came and went. The sound of sirens outside cut through their voices, forcing them into the background. The red and blue flashing lights drew her into the severity of the situation. Her heart pounded in her head so hard that she felt it was going to explode. 

"Blake?"

She was snapped out of her thoughts by Rossi's hand touching her shoulder. He could tell the touch startled her and pulled back quickly, regret flashing behind his eyes. She looked up at him with big empty eyes. Her face was a mask of emotions he struggled to read.

"You ok?" he asked.

She nodded, looking past him and back into the room. She watched as two CSI's we're dusted the doorframe for finger prints. A uniformed police officer had stuck yellow crime scene tape across the corridor to prevent anyone who didn't need to be there from entering. Morgan, Hotch and Reid stood not too far from the bed. Hotch was on his phone to Garcia. The three men looked as desolate as she felt. 

"Blake?" Rossi's voice slowly brought her back to the moment and she looked up without really seeing him. His brown eyes were fixed on her. 

"Sorry," she apologised. She shook her head in an attempt to rid herself of her fears.

JJ was gone. 

The thought terrified her more than anything else in her life had ever done.

She’d arrived at JJ's room fifteen minutes ago, with her bag over her shoulder, and found the door open but JJ wasn't there. Her bag lay abandoned on the floor. Panic had kicked in straight away and she called Hotch. He got to her in just a few minutes by which time she had secured the scene on autopilot. The rest of the team followed and now they were investigating what happened. Blake knew and she knew the rest of the team did too. The unsub took JJ.

"What time did JJ get back to her room? You were the last one to see her," Rossi said. 

Blake glanced at her watch although the time didn't register. "Just after seven, maybe?" she answered. "We all said goodnight outside, we went up together and then she got out go the elevator and I went up to my room."

"Why did you come back here?" Rossi wanted to know.

Blake didn't get a chance to answer. She hadn't even thought of an explanation as to why she had decided to go back to JJ's room. Hotch approached, his phone still in hand, and Morgan was right behind him. Hotch's eyes were dark and they fixed on Blake. She met his gaze and he read the fear in her eyes. He appeared calmer than Morgan, who seemed angry and frustrated. 

"If this is the unsub then why did he kidnap JJ?" Morgan wondered. Confusion flickered behind his eyes. He was desperate to get out there, to search for JJ until the early hours. "Hotch, it's a complete change of victimology. It doesn’t fit the profile."

Blake felt her heart ache in her chest and the knot in her stomach tightened. The back of her throat felt dry and the heavy beating of her heart pounded in her ears. Her eyes drifted from Hotch to Morgan. There was no other way.

Hotch looked at Morgan. "We have to consider the possibility that this may not be that much of a change, Morgan.” He paused, allowing the younger profiler to collect his thoughts. “Everybody has secrets."

"Really?" Morgan asked in disbelief and stared at their team leader in shock. "Hotch, come on! This is JJ! What secret could she possibly have had?!"

Blake hesitantly stepped forward. "Me."

Morgan's eyes snapped in the brunette's direction and across the room Reid looked up too. "What?"

"JJ and I...," Blake began. Guilt and shame welled up in her as she felt her colleagues’ eyes rest on her. Suddenly her friends realised that she had lied to them for months. She could barely bear to look them in the eye. "... We've been seeing each other for the last five and a half months."

Morgan raised his eyes up to the ceiling and turned away from Blake. His body language screamed hurt and betrayal and he walked away without speaking. He ducked under the crime scene tape and disappeared from her sight. Across the room Reid looked defeated. He didn't speak but he didn't leave either. After a few seconds he ended the eye contact and continued to focus on the room. Hotch and Rossi shared a short glance before looking back at Blake. Neither showed signs of judgment and it was Hotch who spoke first.

"Ok," he said and looked at Blake. "Talk to Dave. Tell him everything. Anything that you think of that could help track down this unsub and how he could have known about you and JJ."

Blake nodded and Rossi put a protective hand on her shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Let's go grab a coffee."

As they walked out of JJ's hotel room they found Morgan standing outside the yellow tape. His eyes found Blake's and she saw the anger. Defeated, she hung her head and said softly, "He's never going to forgive me for this, is he?"

"JJ and Morgan have history when it comes to keeping secrets. It was before your time," Rossi answered, remembering how only a couple of years ago an even bigger secret had almost torn the team apart. When Hotch and JJ kept the fact that Emily was still alive from them, it took a lot of time for the broken trust to be restored. Morgan and Reid had been the ones who felt hurt and betrayed the most. Morgan’s reaction told him that that wound hadn’t quite healed as much as he thought. "He'll come round."

Rossi took Blake the hotel lobby, away from the scene, and got them two cups of coffee from the machine. It tasted of a mixture between sewage water and Drano but it was warm and it gave her hands something to do. As Blake sank into one off the leather chairs she clutched the cup between her fingers. She felt Rossi's eyes on her but didn't look up. She waited for him to start talking because she didn't know where to start. 

"I know this isn't going to be easy," Rossi said, aware that nobody liked answering questions about their private life and especially not if those questions were asked by someone they considered a friend. Blake briefly looked up, sadness etched across her face. She nodded. "When did you and JJ get together?"

Blake swallowed. "We didn't mean for it to happen," she answered. "After Erin died and Curtis kidnapped me...." She hesitated. It was a dark day in all their lives and the mention of Erin Strauss brought sadness to Rossi's eyes. "JJ drove me home after the memorial for Erin at your place. James was at Cambridge. She wanted to call him but I said there was no point. I told her that we finalised our divorce four weeks earlier.

"You didn't tell us," Rossi concluded and Blake nodded. 

"I don't know why. I guess I just didn't want to bother anyone. We were swamped with cases and I liked the distraction." She looked down at her hands. The absence of her wedding ring had remained unnoticed for all these months. "It was a mutual decision. I think we both knew for some time it wasn't working out anymore." She took a ragged breath. “JJ stayed for a little while. We talked, for hours. About everything. I don't think either of us really knew how it happened but we were sad, lonely and hurt. We said it wouldn't happen again but I guess we just weren't strong enough. JJ told me she and Will were having problems. They split up a few weeks ago and she moved out."

Rossi realised there were many things that he and the others didn't know about JJ or Blake. They had their reasons to stay silent and he didn't begrudge it them, after all he too had kept things from the team, but he knew not everybody would be as understanding. "And nobody knew?"

Blake shook her head. "We were so careful, mainly for Henry's sake. JJ was worried he wouldn't understand but today she said she was ready. She wanted him to meet me." She swallowed the lump in the back of her throat away. "She didn't know how Will was going to react. He still hasn't signed the divorce papers and has been giving her a hard time. She just wanted to spare Henry having to see his parents fight."

"Sounds like you two had only Henry's best interests in mind," Rossi said and he smiled when Blake looked up. "You've done nothing wrong, Alex. You and JJ wanted privacy to deal with these changes in your lives."

“Jennifer…” Blake’s voice trailed off as she realised that this was the first time that she called JJ ‘Jennifer’ to anyone other than JJ herself. “She was worried about her marriage. She didn’t want Will to think she’d left him because of me. She kept saying that things were bad before we got together but I know she struggled to accept that she had broken her wedding vows.”

Rossi looked at the dark haired profiler. Blake’s pain was genuine. “So Will doesn’t know she was seeing anyone else?”

"If we’d said something sooner, this wouldn't have happened!" Blake said in frustration. "We agreed to tell everyone after this case had been solved, including Will. We’d face whatever would come our way. I think we both felt the confrontational after we found out all victims had kept secrets from their families. JJ said she didn't want to lie anymore."

"Any idea how the unsub could have known about you and JJ?"

Blake sighed. "I don't know." She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "JJ guessed the unsub stalked his victims. He wouldn't have had time for that since we got to Boston." 

"Is there any chance he could have seen you and found out about it that way? You and JJ have been teamed up throughout this case," Rossi said and Blake's eyes snapped up. They were blazing with anger. 

"No," she answered sharply. "We were careful."

Rossi frowned. "Does JJ still wear her wedding ring?"

"When she's working, yes," Blake answered and rubbed her eyes. Her head was pounding, she felt tired and her mind was spinning. She struggled to focus, to keep a clear mind. "She takes it off when she goes home. She thought that this way nobody would notice the change. You know what Garcia is like."

"Eyes like a hawk, that one," Rossi said, noting to himself that the technical analyst had failed to notice Blake herself didn't wear her wedding ring anymore either. Granted, she wasn't as close to Blake as she was to JJ which could explain this little glitch in her observation skills.

"Did you see anyone paying attention to JJ or you while you were out? Someone who made you feel uncomfortable?"

Blake shook her head. "No."

She felt like a victim. She felt like one of those families she saw almost every day, the ones trapped between fear and hope without knowing what the outcome was going to be. She had become one of them. Suddenly she knew what it felt like to be frightened, to fear for the life of someone you loved. She had never looked at herself that way but now here she was, listening to Rossi asking her questions she had asked herself so many times before. 

"Any phone calls or other weird things?"

"Just Will but he keeps calling her anyway," Blake answered. Her eyes found Rossi's and fear was etched across her face. "Does he know?!"

"Alex, JJ's personal file still refers to Will as her next of kin. She didn't update it after their separation, probably because she didn’t think she would need to or maybe because she didn’t get around to it. When you told Hotch she was gone the first thing he did was have Garcia call JJ's emergency contact." 

Blake looked down into her lap. The news hit her like a ton of bricks. “Is he coming?”

Rossi looked at the fragile looking linguist sitting in front of him. He had only known Blake for little over a year but he had grown to like her. In some ways she reminded him of himself in that she kept a lot of her thoughts and feelings bottled up. To see her this defeated made Rossi feel sad. 

“He’s on the next flight out of Dulles. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Blake answered. “Will has every right to be here.” The features on her face hardened as the internal battle to hide her emotions began. Rossi watched as the face of a woman who was worried about the fate of her lover was replaced by a calculated profiler. She swallowed hard. “What do you need me to do?”

“Think,” Rossi answered. “Right now you’re the one who knows JJ better than any of us. You know what her life has been like, what makes her tick. You understand her strengths and weaknesses. I need you to get inside her head and tell us how she will react.”

Blake took a deep breath. “Ok.” Her dark eyes found Rossi’s. “What do I do about the rest of the team?” There was a pause that was long enough to allow her mask to slip. “And Will?”

“Leave that to me,” he promised her and put his hand on her arm. “We’ll find her, Alex. This team has already lost too much in the last few months.” He stood and straightened his spine. From her seated position she looked up at him and she knew he meant it. Rossi’s face reflected the hurt and pain of losing Erin. He would do everything he could to spare her from having to feel that same pain too. “I already lost Erin. I am not prepared to lose someone else.”


	6. Chapter 6

When she opened her eyes the first thing she noticed was the pounding in her head and the sore, dry throat. It hurt to swallow. Her body protested when she tried to move, her muscles sore from having been in one position for too long. It was dark and drafty; enough to send a shiver down her spine once her brain registered the change in temperature. It smelt like mould and damp.

JJ moved her legs and her arms and discovered they were not tied up. She rubbed the side of her head and felt something warm and sticky on her fingers. The blood was dark and slightly tacky, so no longer fresh. The blinding headache made it almost impossible to think and when she moved her head from side to side the nausea washed over her, forcing her to sit back down. She groaned, cradling her head in her hands.

She allowed herself a few minutes to get back to her senses before slowly looking back up. Her eyes had adapted to the darkness and she could make out the shape of a few objects in the room. There appeared to be what looked like a large boiler on the other side. The walls were made out of wood and the floor underneath her feet was cold, loose and felt like sand.

JJ pushed herself onto her hands and knees before using the wall as support to stand up. She felt a bit unsteady but once she was on her feet she reached above her head. There were what felt like three or four inches between her and the ceiling. She took a hesitant step in the direction of the large tank, or boiler. As she came closer she bumped into something solid. Her brain quickly registered it as a staircase.

_A basement,_ she thought. _I’m in a basement. How did I get here? What happened?_

The images and thoughts in her head were scrambled. Faces, sounds, smells… they were all mixed together but none of them really made sense. Another wave of nausea forced her back down onto her knees. The sharp pain in her head returned as she slowly curled up into a ball. The floorboards over her head creaked, releasing a small cloud of dust. It was then that the door at the top of the stairs opened, briefly allowing a bright beam of light into the darkness. Footsteps ascended down the stairs.

A strong hand grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her across the floor. She cried out in pain, tried to kick, but her coordination wasn’t great and all she hit was what turned out to be a stash of paint tins. Then her attacker let her go and she fell onto her back, tears of pain and anger burning behind her eyes. Her stomach turned and the bile rose in the back of her throat.

“Get up,” a voice growled. “Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom is near.”

She looked up. Through the darkness she could make out the statue of a man. “What?” she breathed. “What sins? I… I don’t…”

“Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” He towered over her, like a hunter hovered over its prey. She could not see his face, not even his eyes. He was only a shadow, a demon that had appeared from the darkness. “Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom is near.”

He then stepped away from her, disappearing once again into the shadows of the basement. She heard his footsteps fade as he climbed the stairs. The door opened, and then closed again. The footsteps halted for a moment. She heard the lock. The clicking sound was the most haunting and terrifying thing she had ever heard. Then the floorboards creaked again and the footsteps were gone. She was alone.

JJ crawled across the basement floor towards the boiler. It had been warmer there. Her body eagerly absorbed the heat from the tank and the feeling in her fingers and her toes returned. She held her head in her hands, the pain so blinding she could barely look up. The images in her head continued play out like a silent movie that had no beginning and no end. But one thing stood out in it all.

Blake.

She saw Blake’s face. It had been the last thing she’d seen before the darkness swallowed her up. Her smile as they said goodbye in the elevator, the doors slowly closing and withdrawing her from sight. JJ willed the doors to open again, to have one last look, but the next scene came. It made no sense compared to the one before it. She forced herself to focus back on Blake and brought her face back from the darkness.

She needed to hold on to her, to Blake. As long as she could see her, she would be able to hold on.

~()~

Three hours.

It had been three hours since she found out JJ was gone. Three hours had never felt this long. She paced the incident room at the Boston PD precinct, picking nervously at her finger nails. Her head snapped up when she heard footsteps behind her. The door was open. Hotch walked in and met her gaze.

“Anything?”

“Hotel security video shows you and JJ walking in but doesn’t show her leaving.”

Blake raised her eyes up to the ceiling. “So we’ve got nothing.”

“Rossi and Reid are talking to all the staff that are on shift tonight. The manager has pointed out there’s an emergency exit at the end of JJ’s corridor that leads straight to a fire escape.” Hotch looked at Blake. The desolate, desperate look in her eyes was a feeling he recognised. “The fire escape comes out in a small alley that is connected to the car park. He could have taken her that was and nobody would have seen him leave.”

“What about the three guys JJ and I found?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Hotch said. “I want you and Morgan to start checking them out. Bring them in, talk to them. I’ve got Garcia running more background checks but we need more.” He held her gaze as if to check she was ready. She looked back in. Her silence was her answer. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” she answered and swallowed hard. The lump in her throat had been impossible to shift since finding JJ’s empty hotel room, and the heavy feeling in her stomach was sickening but she couldn’t stay here. She had to be out there doing something. Sitting here wasn’t going to bring JJ back. The walls were closing in and it was driving her insane. “I want to find her, Hotch. I can’t stay here. I’m going mad.”

He nodded. He had anticipated that answer. “Morgan’s waiting for you outside. Call me if you need anything.”

“Where are you going?” she asked as he followed her out of the incident room and into the squad room. It was alive with people. A dozen uniformed officers were busy making calls and helping them with their investigation. Several sets of eyes rested on them.

“Will managed to get on the redeye out of Dulles,” Hotch answered apologetically. She could see the regret in his eyes and knew that if he had been able to stop this from happening he would have. “I’m going to meet him.”

“Hotch?” Blake called after him and he turned around. She felt guilty for having to tell him what she was about to say and she sighed. “He doesn’t know. About me and JJ.”

“I know,” Hotch answered and saw the hurt in Blake’s eyes. “I’ll see to it things are dealt with appropriately.” He paused for a moment. “We’ll find her, Blake. We’ll get her back.”

She watched as he disappeared into the opposite direction and allowed herself ten seconds to gather her thoughts, control her crazy heartbeat and then stepped out of the building. Morgan sat behind the wheel of the black SUV parked outside and she climbed into the passenger seat, slammed the door a little too hard and buckled up. Morgan shot her a sideways glance and saw the distant look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said and she looked up. His words had snapped her out of her thoughts. “About earlier.”

“S’allright,” she answered, more out of habit than actually thinking about what she said. She looked at her hands. The absence of her wedding ring and what it had led to. “I think I probably would have reacted the same way.”

“It’s not that.” Morgan tried to find the right words. “I don’t like secrets, Blake. Ever since the whole thing with Emily, I’ve struggled to trust members of this team. Although I accepted why she had to do what she did, it took some time before I could trust JJ again. I put my life in her hands every day but for a long time I didn’t know who she was anymore. I thought I knew her and she lied to our face for months. So did Hotch and Emily. But it was JJ’s idea.”

Blake stared down into her lap. “We didn’t mean to lie, Morgan. It was just something that happened. We didn’t’ set out to hide the truth. It just seemed…. Easier, maybe. Better for Henry’s sake, for JJ’s sake. It wasn’t about telling the truth to everybody else, it was about finding the time when telling the truth was right for us.”

“I’m sorry that you didn’t get to choose that moment for yourself,” Morgan said softly. They’d reached a red traffic light and he looked at Blake. It had taken him a little time to get used to her and to stop seeing her as Emily’s replacement. She wasn’t Emily and she was never going to be. He’d soon learnt that she was her own person. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be.”

“I just want her back, Morgan.”

The fragility of her voice hit him right in his heart and as the car kicked back into motion he shot Blake a last sideways glance. She was staring out of the window into the world around them. “We’ll find her.”

“I hope so,” she answered without looking back at him. Boston flashed by outside and she wondered if she would ever be able to look at the world around her the same way again. “Because I don’t know what I’m going to do if we don’t.”

She was used to fighting monsters. She had seen plenty of them in her career. Staring evil in the face, seeing the demon behind the mask of normality were things she was used to. Until today she had managed to keep evil and darkness out of her life. When she left the BAU at the end of the day she left behind the shadows that followed her at any other time of the day but today they had crept into her life, destroyed the safety that she knew. Darkness had come and took what she valued and cared about the most. The demons had found her, caught up, and now it was up to her to fight them.

They drove across Boston to the address of one of the three guys who had made their short list of possible suspects. Morgan seemed to know where he was going and Blake was glad she didn’t have to pay attention to the traffic. The rain came out of nowhere and battered the windscreen. She probably would have gotten them both killed if she had to drive in this state. She enjoyed the monotone sound of the rain against the glass as it drowned out the haunting thoughts in her head.

“Hey, talk to me,” Morgan said when he saw the way she stared at the rain. “Blake, talk to me.” He briefly nudged her arm. “Tell me about JJ.”

She smiled. JJ always made her smile. “I guess I just can’t believe I actually got that lucky,” she said. “You know what people say about not looking for something and then finding whatever it is you weren’t looking for?” She glanced at Morgan. “That’s JJ.”

“You really like her, don’t you?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” He kept his eyes firmly on the road. “You deserve to be happy.”

“The unsub doesn’t seem to think so.”

“The unsub is an idiot. I know that and you know that.”

Blake heaved a sigh and rested her head against the window. “When I find him I am going to cut his balls off and…” She didn’t finish that sentence but looked at Morgan. She spotted the sly smile on his face. “Somehow I think that what I’d like to do to him is nothing compared to what you would like to do to him.”

“This team is family,” Morgan answered. There was darkness in his voice. The words he spoke were the words of an angry man, a man who had been hurt, a man who had lost. “No one messes with my family.” His eyes briefly found Blake’s. “We will find JJ. She is family and families don’t give up.”


	7. Chapter 7

The world was full of creeps. She’d learnt that the day she joined the Bureau and every day since then. Some were better at hiding it than others. A handful she recognised just walking the streets but most hid their true face behind a mask that allowed them to effortlessly blend into society. They were the type people would talk about long after they were arrested; the neighbours, the teachers, the football coaches. The kind of people you wouldn’t expect could have a dark side were often the ones that surprised and stunned the world the most.

Blake felt a cold shiver creep down her spine when she and Morgan left the first of the addresses on their list. As she heard the door close behind her she turned to look at the other profiler and Morgan met her gaze.

“Did you get a bad vibe from that guy?” he asked, taking the words right out of her mouth. She nodded.

“Something’s not right in that house.”

“He’s most definitely not our unsub but I’d love to dig a little deeper into his life, see what he’s really hiding,” Morgan answered as they walked back to the SUV. He checked his watch. It was almost midnight. His heart told him to keep going but his mind told him that working through the night would be futile. He heaved a sigh before opening the door. “Let’s go meet up with the others.”

Blake looked at him before climbing back into the car. “Would you mind just dropping me back at the hotel?”

“Everything allright?” Morgan’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s just that… Hotch has picked up Will from the airport,” Blake answered, feeling embarrassment settle in her stomach. She had never expected she would be having this conversation with anyone, especially not Morgan. “I errrr… I don’t think that’s really the kind of situation I want to be in right now.”

“You know this isn’t your fault, don’t you?” Morgan asked her. “We don’t choose who we fall in love with.”

She tried to smile. She appreciated that he was trying to be kind but it didn’t do anything to change the way she felt. Blake put on her seatbelt. “I guess I am just not quite ready to be seen as ‘the other woman’. I know he doesn’t know but it won’t be long. The whole reason the unsub took JJ was because of me. We can’t keep hiding that from him. He’s going to find out eventually.”

“Then maybe it’s better if you do face him,” Morgan suggested. He checked his rear view mirror before pulling away from the house, making a mental note to ask a couple of detectives to go back in the morning and turn the place inside out. He glanced back at Blake. “Blake, listen, JJ and Will split up some time ago. He doesn’t have to know that you were seeing her before she left.”

“It’s not going to make any difference. I will still be the person who took JJ from him, and now I am also the person responsible for her being captured by the unsub.” She sighed. “Maybe I should go back to Washington and let you guys deal with this.”

“You’re not serious, are you?” Morgan questioned. “Blake! This is JJ! You can’t leave. She needs you.”

Blake didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure JJ needed her. JJ needed the team to have a clear mind, to be able to focus. Her own brain felt scrambled. She couldn’t concentrate on more than one thing at a time, leaving her confused and frustrated. The emotions concerning Will arriving in Boston and him finding out the truth about her and JJ troubled her more than she’d like to admit. She rested her head against the window and let the coolness of the glass soak into her glowing skin. She was tired but afraid that if she slept she would only see her nightmares become real.

Morgan drove the SUV through the almost abandoned streets of Boston back to the precinct. When he pulled up outside the building and got out of the vehicle, he waited for Blake to join him. He had ignored her request to return to the hotel and she hadn’t protested when she noticed he drove back into the direction of the precinct. She shot him a grateful look and he patted her on her shoulder before walking inside. She followed, feeling the knot in her stomach tighten.

“Anything?” Hotch asked when he saw them walk into the squad room. Morgan shook his head.

“First guy is definitely a weirdo, though. I’m sending some detectives out in the morning.” He rubbed the back of his neck where the tension had begun to settle in his muscles. “We’ll hit the other two in the morning.” He held Hotch’s gaze. “Have you got anything?”

“Reid spoke to one of the women from the room service team,” Hotch said. “She delivered room service a couple of doors down from JJ’s room and remembers seeing a man standing outside her room. He’d knocked but when there was no answer he used a key card to get in.”

Blake looked up. “How did the unsub get a key to JJ’s room?”

“He could have stolen a key from the cleaning team or he could have made his own,” Reid answered as he walked into the squad room. “It is surprisingly easy to make a hotel master key card.”

“Does the woman remember around what time she saw him?” Morgan asked.

“We checked the time the room service was delivered to the room down the hall. 6.27 pm,” Reid answered. “The unsub got to the hotel not long before we did.”

“There’s evidence of a car having been parked in the alley behind the hotel. Dave found a fresh oil stain.” Hotch looked around the room. “The unsub moves by car but the vehicle has got issues. It’s leaking oil. Garcia’s checking security footage in the area to see if any cars can be seen leaving the hotel around the time JJ went missing.” His eyes fixed on Blake. “You got a minute?”

She followed him across the squad room and down the hallway to one of the interrogation rooms. He closed the door behind them and she turned to look up at him. He looked serious, she thought. More serious than any other day. She could see the dark circles around his eyes. Whenever a team member was in danger, they appeared. She knew that in those moments he relived the final seconds of Hailey’s life, experiencing that pain all over again, praying he wouldn’t have to feel it because he lost someone else.

“I spoke to Will,” Hotch said. “Filled him in the best I could.” Blake heaved a sigh. The weight on her shoulders only felt heavier. “Explained to him the unsub took JJ because he felt she was keeping a secret. I had to tell him what the secret was.”

Blake’s heart sank. “Ok.” She stared down at the floor, feeling the sudden need to hide, to flee, to run away as far as she possibly could but she stood nailed to the ground. “What did he say?”

“I didn’t tell him it was you.”

Her eyes snapped back up, surprise etched across her face. “What?”

Hotch’s eyes pierced into hers and suddenly she realised what he was trying to do. “I told Will that we found evidence that since their separation JJ has been seeing someone but that she had not yet felt confident to share this information with the group. I also told him that we do not know who this person is and that for the course of our investigation, it doesn’t matter.”

He was protecting her and he was protecting JJ.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Her voice betrayed just how fragile she felt. She took a step towards him. “Hotch, I never meant for anyone to get involved in this. It’s something between me and JJ and if I had known that this would happen then…”

He put a hand on her arm, silencing her. “It’s not your fault, Blake.”

Again another person told her not to blame herself, that this hadn’t happened because of her. She averted her eyes, feeling the tears burn behind them but she wasn’t going to let anyone see. She wasn’t the best at sharing her emotions and she believed it was one of the reasons she was so good at her job. “Then why does it feel like it is?”

“I’ve asked myself that question many times when things happened,” Hotch said. He spoke to her like a friend, like a brother would speak to a sister. His voice was soft, warm and caring. “After Hailey died…. Everything that happened… I questioned it. I questioned every move I made, every decision, every thought. It almost destroyed me.” He looked at her just as long until she shyly looked up. “Don’t let that happen to you.”

She just nodded and he opened the door for her. She stepped out of the interrogation room but before she could walk away, Hotch put his hand on her shoulder. She turned and he saw the hope flickering behind her eyes. He knew that feeling; to have to fight against time and feel like everything you love is slowly slipping through your fingers. It had slipped through his, he wasn’t going to stand by and watch how it slipped through Blake’s fingers too. “We’ll find her.”

Together they walked back into the squad room. Rossi, Reid and Morgan had gathered around one of the desks and Morgan held his phone. It was on speaker. From across the room Blake heard Garcia’s voice and for the first time that evening she recognised the sound of excitement.

From across the room Morgan’s eyes found Blake’s. He smiled, she smiled in return. “Garcia, Blake and Hotch just walked in. Tell them what you just told us.”

“Well, my lovelies, I’ve searched through all the different tapes and let me tell you there are some seriously disgusting things going on in the block around that hotel, you might want to consider staying somewhere else the next time you’re in Boston,” Garcia rattled. “But I’ve found one car that appears on four different cameras driving away from the hotel in the direction of Charlestown. One person inside the car, looks to be male.”

“Licence plate?” Morgan asked. He felt his heart pounding in his throat.

“Working on it,” Garcia replied. There was a hint of frustration in her voice. “The picture’s dark and grainy. These small shops don’t use the latest HD cameras, I’m afraid, though I so wish they would. I’m doing my best to clean it up. I’ll get back to you.”

She hung up.

“You think it’s our unsub?” Rossi asked.

“For now we’ve got to assume that it is,” Hotch answered. “There’s a couple of bunk beds down the hall. We should all try and get some sleep.” His eyes briefly darted to Blake. He knew just as well as she did that she wasn’t going to. He was about to speak when from across the room another person appeared.

“Have you heard anything else?” Will’s distinct accent cut through the squad room and Blake spun around.

He looked old, she thought. The lines across his face seemed to have become more distinct overnight. His eyes had lost their shine and he seemed weary and tired. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a simple sweater. His hands were pushed into the pockets and for a brief moment he reminded her of a child who had lost its parents and didn’t know where to go. She knew how he felt.

Will’s eyes found Blake’s and their gazes locked. “You found out she was missing, didn’t you?” he asked and she nodded.

“Yeah,” she answered, feeling her heart break all over again in her chest. “I did.”

“Hotch said you worked with her in the day.” Will took a hesitant step towards her. Blake didn’t move. “Did she… did she seem different to you? Did she say anything?”

Blake swallowed hard. The lump in her throat almost chocked her. She felt every other set of eyes rest on her. She had never felt more awful in her life. They were all lying to him and right now she didn’t even know why. “No,” she answered. Her face didn’t even betray the hint of a lie. “No, Will, I’m afraid she didn’t seem any different than normal to me.”  
He nodded and then turned away. “Thank you.” He took his phone out his pocket and dialled a number. He disappeared and Blake turned around to the rest of the group.

“I can’t do this,” she said, her eyes wide and full of sadness. “I can’t lie to him like this.”

“You kept silent to us for almost six months. What do you want to do?” Rossi asked. “Tell him?”

“He’s going to find out eventually.”

“But do you think now is the right time?”

She sighed. “Is there ever a right time?”

Rossi shook his head. “Blake, I know I can’t tell you what to do but if you want my opinion then I think you should wait. Wait until we find JJ.”

The fear was real. It hit her harder now than it had done before. She felt so helpless and so lost. Her eyes drifted around the room, from person to person. They were her friends, her family. Her voice broke when she spoke. “But what if we don’t find her?”

“We will,” Rossi reassured her and at that same moment Morgan’s cell phone rang.

“Talk to us, baby girl.”

“Do you have the licence plate?” Hotch asked.

“I’ve got something better,” Garcia answered. “I’ve got a name.”


	8. Chapter 8

Blue and red flashing lights lit up the dark Boston night. The sound of sirens woke people from their sleep as dark vehicles and police cars sped across the almost empty streets. The rain lashed against the windscreen of the SUV, blinding their vision. The wipers moved as fast as they could but were no match against the unrelenting downpour. A storm had unleashed itself onto the city.

Blake sat in the backseat, her fingers digging into the seatbelt. She wore her bullet proof vest and had bound her hair back into a ponytail. Her chocolate eyes were gazing out of the rain stained window, the flashing lights occasionally lit up her face. Her heart pounded in her chest so loud that she believed it could very well break itself free from her body.

Fear.

She could taste it, feel it, and smell it. It was inside of her, slowly grabbing hold of her heart. Squeezing it slowly, making her suffer. This was what pain felt like. The sickening kind of feeling where one could do nothing but hope and pray that the most precious thing they had ever known in their lives wasn't about to slip through their fingers; forever lost.

Morgan watched Blake in the rear view mirror. He saw the look in her eyes, the nerves etched across her face. His eyes then met those of Hotch. He had too had noticed the look on the brunette's face. He and Morgan didn't speak. Words didn't need to be said. Everybody knew that tonight would be the difference between their team surviving or falling apart.

Garcia had given them the name of the suspect seen driving the car away from the hotel not long after JJ was kidnapped. When the name rolled off her tongue, Blake had immediately remembered he was one of the other two names on the list of possible suspects she and JJ had created. It shifted something in the team; frustration was replaced by a sense of hope and utter despair.

Tonight they had to separate themselves from being friends. They couldn't be friends. They had to be profilers; they had to be FBI agents. They couldn't afford their thoughts to cloud their judgment, for their emotions to get into the way of making quick and crucial decisions. They would have to distance themselves from their memories of JJ. She was a victim like the hundreds of others they had saved over the years. She wasn't their friend tonight. As much as it hurt, tonight she was just another number. It was the only way they could do what needed to be done.

Blake stared out into the dark night. Over their heads a thunder storm began to rumble. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, the thundering crash with which it came down startled her enough to snap her out of her thoughts. Weary eyes found Hotch looking at her and she knew that her guard had dropped long enough for him to see behind the mask.

"You ok?" he inquired and she gave a small jerk with her head indicating she was.

"Yeah." The tremor in her voice was a mixture of fear and adrenaline. "I'm good."

She remembered Will's face. The realisation that they were about to find JJ had hit him almost as much as it had hit her. She struggled to keep herself strong in front of him. He got to show the emotions she felt and all she got was to hold on to herself, to compose herself and pretend that everything was fine. But she recognised herself in him, in the hurt in his eyes. She felt it too. She had never hurt more in her life than right now.

It was a raw kind of pain. The kind that ripped right through heart and soul.

The monotone sound of the car engine drowned out the scrambled mess of her thoughts. It lured her into a false sense of safety, a place of comfort where she could hide. It was what she needed to close off the part of her brain that caused her to lose focus. She listened as the humming sound filled her ears.

The car came to an unexpected stop. Tyres squeaked as brakes were slammed. Through the pouring rain she could make out the outline of a house at the end of a narrow drive way. A lawn and a simple looking white fence separated the house from the rest of the street. Tall trees lined either side of the house. The windows were dark and there was no car parked in the drive way.

Blake's hand shot to the door handle and before Morgan or Hotch had even unbuckled their seatbelts, she had stepped out into the rain. It poured down on her, plastering strands of brown hair across her face. Over the sound of thunder she heard Morgan call her name.

"Blake!"

She spun around, eyes blazing. "What?!"

"Remember," he said, running towards her, "we have to do this right. We can't afford any mistakes!"

"There won't be any mistakes," Blake bit back. "I just want JJ back."

~()~

The cold had crept into her bones. Her body ached and it hurt to move. Her throat was dry and her stomach had growled in hunger every few minutes. Her head was throbbing. The nausea came in waves, washing over her unexpectedly whenever she tried to move her head. She kept moving her fingers and toes to help with her circulation, to keep herself going. Whenever her eyes tried to focus on an object in the room, the headache got worse.

She kept listening for the floorboards over her head to creak. She waited for the sound of footsteps, for the door to open at the top of the stairs. She expected the light to come on, to burn her eyes, but so far there had been only darkness. He hadn't come back. She didn't know why. She didn't know where he was but she remained guarded.

JJ heaved a sigh. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was tired. Sleep was calling for her.

"I've got to stay awake," she told herself.

In the distance the sound of sirens grew stronger and the hope that had begun to slip out of her heart returned. She sat up, pain shooting down her back as she moved. Her knees buckled as she tried to get onto her knees. Her hands made contact with the cold damp soil of the basement floor and she slowly pushed herself up, using a wooden beam for support. She whimpered in pain as she rose up to her full length.

JJ's legs trembled as she took a hesitant step into the direction of the stairs. She took another and then a third.

Suddenly the loud sound of something move above her head caught her attention. Footsteps came running towards the door. Her eyes drifted up, unsure whether to hope for her freedom or expect something much, much worse.

The door opened and a bright beam of yellow light lit up the staircase. The shadow that descended looked like something taken from her nightmares and her hopes shattered when a hard fist made contact with her face, knocking her backwards. She lost her balance and fell, her body crashing against the opposite wall. A red hot flash of white shot through her eyes and the most horrific outcry of pain rolled off her lips.

"NO!" a male voice grunted and he grabbed a firm hold of her hair, dragging her across the floor.

She kicked and hit but couldn't reach his arms or his legs. She just kept hitting air.

"Silence!" he barked as he let go of her and threw her weakened body away from him. She landed on her stomach, her arms sprawled out. It knocked the air out of her lungs and she felt so sick that she couldn't bring herself to turn around and face him.

She heard him come closer. He dragged his feet, she noticed, almost as if he walked with a limp.

"Pay for your sins," he hissed as he towered over her. He was the hunter, she was the prey.

He slowly leant down and grabbed her shirt. It tore and the sound cut through her ears. Her body froze momentarily as he continued to rip her shirt. She felt the cold against her back and the hairs in the back of her neck and across the length of her arms rose up. She shuddered when her attacker's fingers pressed against her flesh. When she moved, a sudden weight came down onto the bottom of her spine. Her knee.

The sound of the blowtorch being switched on alerted her to what was about to happen. She turned her head to see the blue flame erupt from the device. The roaring noise froze her. She felt the heat against her face and beads of sweat began to glisten on her forehead. Her body was too weak and too tired to fight him and she didn't protest when she felt him shift his weight to pick up another item he had dropped to the floor.

She knew he was heating the poker. The one with the number six. It was this torture device that he had used to mark his other victims. Minutes, maybe seconds, from now, he would put the searing hot metal against her flesh. Her stomach dropped and then turned at the thought of the smell of burnt flesh and the pain that would come.

Loud voices filled the air. The silence was broken. Someone screamed but she couldn't identify the voice. She felt his hands against her skin, the heat of the blowtorch against her flesh. He was still on top of her. This part of the basement was dark and she couldn't see anything other than ghastly shadows dancing across the walls.

"Eric Margulies, FBI! Drop it!"

This time JJ knew it was Morgan. She heard his voice, recognised it. She had heard him call those words countless times before but for the first time they sounded different. Edgy, with a hint of despair. His voice thundered through the dark basement and an indescribable peace settled into her chest. It was relief and it brought tears to her eyes. The emotions she had kept bottled up until now began to pour out of her.

"I said, DROP IT!" Morgan commanded. The despair in his voice had been replaced by anger.

She didn't know the soft click of a trigger being pulled could sound so deafening.

His voice was in her ear, as if he was speaking only to her. He repeated the words he had spoken to her before. He repeated them, like a mantra, like they were the only thing in this whole world that he believed in. "Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom is near."

"Eric, put the torch down! Things don't have to be this way. There is still a way out of this!"

It was Hotch's voice, she realised. He was here. They were all here. Her friends, her family. They found her. She wasn't alone anymore.

It happened so fast.

She felt his weight shift. Somehow he managed to balance on one knee and pull the poker out of the flame coming from the torch. The poker in his hand slowly lowered itself towards her skin. She braced herself, her fingers scraping through the direst as she prepared herself for the scarring pain that would come. Her eyes squeezed shut and her muscles tensed. She felt the heat against her skin as he raised his arm. He cried out something's he couldn't hear.

The gunshot smothered his voice and killed the words in the back of his throat.

The poker slipped from his fingers and landed in the sand beside her with a dull thud. The weight of his body crashed down on her and she stiffened, momentarily believing that the bullet hadn't just hit him, it had her as well. Her heart skipped a beat and her breath hitched. The pain that shot through her was blinding. A quiet whimper fell from her lips.

"JJ?!"

She felt warm, gentle hands on her cheek and fingers threaded her hair. Someone was close by her and her eyes slowly opened. The basement was suddenly bathing in light that blinded her and hurt her eyes. Blake's face slowly emerged from the shadows. Relief filled chocolate eyes as she saw the blue ones looking back at her. JJ felt her heart suddenly overflow.

"Alex..."

"Get him off her!" Blake shouted and Hotch and Rossi appeared beside her. Each grabbed the now dead man on top of her by an arm and lifted his weight off of her. The sudden shift of weight made that her lungs eagerly expanded and sucked in large gulps of air. The bullet Morgan had fired had pierced his heart through his back and blood had begun to pool onto the floor. Morgan had proven once again what an excellent shot he was.

JJ scrambled to her knees and threw her arms around Blake's neck, hiding her face in her hair and inhaled the soft, sweet scent of her perfume. Her body was weak and she lost her balance. Tears slid silently down her cheeks and Blake held her as tightly as she could. She rested her head against JJ's shoulder, rocking her gently backwards and forwards. She'd been sitting on her knees but sprawled out across the floor as JJ pressed all her weight against her. She didn't want to let her go.

Someone shouted for a medic and minutes later there were more people around her. The EMT shone a light in her eyes and gave her a bottle of water. She finished it almost in one go and asked for another one. They checked the heart and the bruising on the side of her face. Their poking and prodding hands were intrusive and she endured the torment in silence, never letting go of Blake's hand.

The older woman gave JJ what she needed. The space to organise her thoughts and to understand what had happened and feel her emotions. She saw blue eyes stare into the distance and knew better than to try and bring her back to this moment. This was what she had to do right now. She knew JJ would eventually look at her but for now she just had to hold her hand to let her know she was here.

One of the EMT's turned to Hotch who had been watching the scene from a short distance away. "She's good to go."

"What about her head?" Blake asked, worry lacing her words.

"Couple of days of rest, some painkillers and plenty of sleep." The EMT noticed the way Blake's arm was protectively draped across JJ's shoulders and the corner of his lips curled up into a little smile. "You may want to wake her every few hours just to make sure she's alright. Bring her to the ER if she vomits or complains of any headaches but I think she'll be fine."

Blake nodded and looked at JJ, gently squeezing her hand. Her lips brushed against the blonde profiler's ear. "Let's go home."

JJ slowly turned to look at Blake and their gazes locked. "Yes," she whispered. "Let's go home."


	9. Chapter 9

Feeling Blake's arm around her shoulders was the safest and warmest feeling she had ever experienced. A single touch that was capable of chasing away the demons and the darkness, a touch that calmed the racing of her heart and made the fear she felt inside slowly go away. A single touch that didn't need words to tell her she was finally home, that nothing would happen to her here. They were together. It was over.

JJ looked up to the hotel where they'd been staying; the same hotel from where Eric Margulies had kidnapped her. Lights were on behind about two dozen windows. A couple of shadows moved and a bone chilling shudder rolled down her spine. Her grip on Blake's hand tightened and the brunette turned to look at her.

"It's okay," Blake whispered. "You're staying with me tonight. Everything's going to be allright."

She'd never been so nervous to walk into her building. Entering the lobby was like stepping back into part of a nightmare and the bright light hurt her eyes. She squinted as the pain in her head increased. Tiredness washed over her. She turned her head away, almost burying her face in Blake's hair. The faint scent of shampoo and the familiar perfume were comforting.

Blake pressed the elevator button and softly kissed the top of JJ's head. The doors slid open and she helped the blonde inside. When the doors slowly closed, JJ's arms found their way around Blake's neck and the older woman held her as if there was nothing else left in this world to hold onto. Although JJ didn't speak, Blake could read her like an open book. She felt the fear on her skin, could feel the tears before they had even been shed.

When they finally reached her hotel room she used her key card to unlock the door. She stepped inside, switched on the light and turned around to see JJ still standing outside. Now that the room was bathing in light she stepped over the threshold. Tired, hollow blue eyes found brown and the tears came without warning.

Blake caught her before she fell to her knees. The weight of her body had become too much. Her legs buckled, couldn't carry the burden of her fear anymore. Together their bodies slumped down to the ground. Angry tears violently lashed against her skin, leaving burning red tracks across her cheeks. Blake's hands were in her hair, gently stroking the strands out of her eyes. Her lips were near her ear, whispering words of comfort.

With her back against the wall, Blake gently rocked JJ from side to side. She rested her head against that of the younger woman and felt how the tension slowly began to leave her body. JJ's shoulders shocked as she cried and the sound and the bitterness of her tears cut through Blake's heart like a knife.

"This isn't your fault," Blake whispered when she heard JJ mutter that she blamed herself and should have seen it coming. JJ lifted up her head and her tearstained face was swollen and red. Blue eyes sought for brown.

"Do they know?" Her voice was tiny. "About us?"

Blake nodded. "Yes," she whispered softly. "I told them." She gently stroked JJ's cheek and the corners of her lips curled up into a smile when she saw a hint of fear in the blonde profiler's eyes. "Jayj, they wanted to find you as badly as I did. They didn't care. They don't even care we didn't tell them. They understand why."

Relief spread across JJ's face and she rested her head against Blake's shoulder. "How did you find me?"

"One of the guys on the list we narrowed down with Garcia," Blake answered. Her voice was only a whisper. "It turned out he fitted the profile perfectly and Garcia found his car on the security footage. He was leaving the hotel."

She looked at JJ. She'd lost many people in her life. Every loss had left a scar because the wound never quite healed. After her mother died, she hoped she would never have to feel that kind of pain again. It was one of the many reasons why she stopped going home. Kansas City just became part of a different life, one that she hadn't lived for a long time. But almost losing JJ had ripped all those wounds right back open.

The fear and the pain were two things she never wanted to feel again and yet she had. It was what happened when she let herself be vulnerable, when she allowed herself to love. She didn't know she could still feel this way about another person after having closed herself off for so long. But JJ had managed to knock her walls down without even trying and without those walls she felt pain, she felt weakness. The thought of losing JJ terrified her more than any serial killer ever would because without JJ she'd truly be alone.

"Alex?" JJ whispered and chocolate brown eyes looked down into blue.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Blake arched an eyebrow. "What for?"

"For finding me."

JJ looked up at Blake. It had been her face she kept focusing on when the darkness and the cold of the basement became too overwhelming. It was her voice she kept hearing inside her head when the pain made her want to pass out. Blake's face and Henry's face had never stopped playing before her eyes. They were her everything.

She and Will hadn't been a family for a long time. They kept pretending they were, looking for something that could fix the already broken pieces together, but they only continued to fall apart further until there was nothing left to fix. Leaving and walking away from the dream of having what her parents had when she was little, before her sister's death drove them apart because their grief was just too big, was the hardest thing she ever had to do. She didn't know if she could ever find that hope again but Blake had somehow shown her that she could. She had found her family again.

"I wasn't ever going to let you leave," Blake whispered and shifted her body weight a little so that JJ rested between her legs with her back against her chest. She gently kissed her on her hair. "I wasn't ready to give up on you just yet."

JJ smiled as the tears on her cheeks began to dry. "I don't think I'll ever be ready."

"You know that if you want to talk about what happened in that basement, you can, right?" Blake threaded JJ's golden locks with her fingers. "And if you don't then that's fine too."

JJ didn't answer immediately. She stared at the wall on the opposite side of the room, her body resting against Blake. The feeling of the older woman running her fingers through her hair was relaxing and it helped her focus. The images of what happened down in the basement continued to haunt her. She could still hear the creaking of the staircase and the smell of the blowtorch.

"He quoted the Bible."

Blake leant in a little. "What?"

"When he first came to check on me down in that basement," JJ said. "He sounded like he was quoting some kind of religious verse or perhaps the Bible." Her eyes narrowed. The memory of his voice was like a nightmare from which she couldn't wake. A demon whispering to her from the shadows. The hairs in the back of her neck rose up as she remembered his voice. "He kept repeating the same lines over and over."

"What did he say?"

JJ's eyes fluttered shut and her voice was reduced to a barely audible whisper. "Repent for your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom is here."

"Matthew 3:2."

She turned her head, her eyes wide open in surprise. "What?"

"The quote," Blake said softly. "It's from the Bible." She took a deep breath. "Did he say anything else?"

"Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered."

Blake's eyes narrowed. "Psalm 32:1. He quoted two different parts of the Bible but they appear to be linked in the sense that both make a mention of sins."

"You think that's what he was doing?" JJ asked without turning her head to look at Blake. "He was killing sinners?"

"It would fit in with Reid's theory about the Biblical meaning of the number six, which points at the weakness of man, the manifestation of sin and the evils of Satan. When Hotch and Rossi searched the house they found evidence that Margulies was fanatically religious. They also found prescription bottles for medication to treat psychosis. They hadn't been refilled for several months."

JJ didn't speak. It wasn't the first time they had crossed paths with those who somehow gotten lost in religion. Paired with mental illness, religion could easily become an obsession and hearing voices and having religious delusions wasn't uncommon. There were all sorts of triggers that could cause a person to spiral and where religion was strength for millions of people around the world, for some it became their downfall.

JJ slowly moved until she got onto her knees and then stood up. Her legs felt stronger now. She turned slightly to look at Blake still sitting on the floor and the older woman stood up too.

"You need to rest," Blake said, briefly inspecting JJ's forehead. She had a couple of bruises and a large scrape across her cheek and dark rings around her eyes. Her normally blue eyes were a little bloodshot and she looked tired and worn out. Dust and dirt clung to her hair and clothes. "Do you want to shower?"

JJ nodded and Blake led her across the hotel room to the bathroom. Ir was only a few steps but it felt like a thousand miles. She opened the door, switched on the light and followed JJ inside. She watched as JJ turned to the mirror and looked at her own broken reflection. Their eyes met in the looking glass and JJ tried to smile. It didn't quite reach her eyes but Blake knew that she tried.

"Want me to stay?" she asked softly when JJ didn't move towards the shower on her own.

JJ nodded.

"Ok."

Blake stepped closer to JJ and carefully began peeling the shirt one of the paramedics had given her away from her body. It was a size too big and cleaner than anything else she wore. JJ willingly raised her arms above her head so Blake could pull it over her head. It was only now that Blake saw the extent of bruising across JJ's shoulders, collarbone and back. Fiery red marks and deep purple bruises covered her normally pale skin.

JJ's fingers trembled as she unbuttoned her pants. They slid down her legs and she stepped out of them. She now stood in front of Blake in only her underwear. Their eyes found each other again and Blake waited for the silent approval before reaching around JJ's back and unhooking her bra. The fabric slipped away from her body and JJ then slowly peeled down her underwear.

Blake knew she was seeing JJ at her most vulnerable, in more ways than one and she leant in, placing a soft and warm kiss on the large bruise that spread from JJ's right collarbone over her shoulder and into the back of her neck.

"I'll be right outside if you need anything," she said as she moved towards the door.

"Alex?" JJ called her back and Blake turned in the doorway. Blue eyes found brown.

"Stay."

Blake closed the bathroom door and slowly closed the distance between her and JJ. Without speaking she removed her own clothing, never breaking the eye contact between her and JJ. When she stepped out of her underwear she took the blonde profiler's hand and led her to the shower. She switched it on and waited for JJ to get into the cubicle first.

She then followed her in and her breath hitched when she felt the water begin to rain down on her skin. JJ's eyes found hers once again and she smiled. This time it lit up the blue of her eyes and Blake rested her forehead against JJ's. In a moment of silence they let the hot water wash the dirt, the despair and the pain away.


	10. Chapter 10

JJ woke to the comforting feeling of Blake's protective arm draped across her stomach. She lay on her side, facing the door. Blake lay on her side too, her index finger grazing lightly over a small patch of exposed skin on JJ's abdomen. The touch was feather light but it stirred something inside of her. It chased away the demons of the night before.

Afraid to move and wake Blake, JJ remained on her side, her eyes fixed on the wall. Her mind began to drift. First to the events of the previous night and the unsub. The terror and the fear she had felt followed by the anger and the guilt for not having seen the danger sooner. But then they drifted further back, through the recent weeks and months. Her life had changed so much, more than she had even realised. Her life had changed because of another unsub, the one who targeted all of them as a team. Because of that, she and Blake had somehow found each other in the midst of chaos; a safe haven in a crazy storm.

The day of Erin's memorial was a dark day in her past. They had lost members of their team before but never in this way. She'd seen what the loss of Emily had done to her friends and to know that she was alive was a heavy burden to carry. Erin Strauss was the first true death to hit them so close to home since Hailey and it had left a deep and open wound.

She'd driven Blake home and Blake had invited her in, offered her a glass of wine but she settled for coffee. They'd talked. The hours just faded, and it had felt like only minutes had gone by. Blake told her about the aftermath of the Amerithrax case and how it affected her. JJ opened up about the loss of Emily, both when the team perceived her dead and after she took the job at Interpol. Somehow the conversation had led them to James, after JJ insisted calling him.

Blake's confession that their divorce had been finalised without the team even noticing had shocked her. She knew the dark haired woman was a private person but she didn't know the extent of how deep this really went. But the confession made her feel comfortable enough to talk about Will. It had never been a secret he didn't like her job, didn't like the long days it kept her away from home. They argued more and more, whenever she was home. Eventually she didn't look forward to going home anymore because she knew all that was waiting for her was more regret.

JJ didn't quite remember how it had happened or who had moved first but somehow she had ended up kissing Blake. Blake had kissed her back. They were hesitant and very much aware that there would be no way back from this but they were both willing. It all just happened from there. Blake took her hand, led her up the stairs and quietly closed the bedroom door behind them. In the dim light of the lamp on her bedside table she had looked like the most beautiful thing JJ had ever seen.

She still looked like that when she woke up at three in the morning with Blake's arm draped around her waist, their naked bodies tangled up together, wrapped up in the soft cotton bed sheets that smelled of lilac. Somehow she had managed to slip out from underneath Blake's arm without waking her and in the dark she managed to find her clothes.

What some people would have called a walk of shame, JJ didn't see. In fact, she wasn't ashamed at all. She hovered for a little while in the bedroom doorway, watching Blake sleep, before crossing the room again and softly kissing her goodbye. She then left and went home. Driving through the dark and quiet streets of D.C, every part of her screamed to turn around and go back but she knew she couldn't. Not with Henry still at home.

She fell asleep on the couch. Climbing into bed with Will wasn't an option. She didn't sleep much, instead lying awake and thinking about Blake. She'd picked up her phone and sent her a message, saying she was sorry to have left but that she had never felt more safe and warm in her life. The next day, when Will took Henry to go and buy some new clothes, she met Blake in the park.

She and Will hadn't talked about why she came home late. If he knew then he didn't ask but there were many nights where she came home in the early morning. They somehow completed a morning routine that fitted perfectly around Henry and after that they went their separate ways. It was Blake's idea to meet in the park and they walked for a little while, in silence, before finding a bench to sit on. They didn't talk about what happened the previous night but about what could happen in the future. JJ had kissed her without thinking. It answered the question for both of them; they didn't want to move away from this.

Their next case took them to Michigan and the sharing of hotel rooms began. When they returned home, JJ spent most of her time trying to find an affordable place to live that wasn't in the most crime ridden part of town and eventually found a small apartment that, although it made her commute to work longer, was still in a great place for Henry. That same day she told Will she was moving out. Again he didn't ask. He watched her leave.

"Jayj?" Blake whispered into her ear and JJ was snapped out of her thoughts, turning her head a little so she could look at the brunette.

"Yeah?"

Blake, still somewhat sleepy, smiled. "Just checking you're awake." Her grip on JJ's stomach tightened a little. Her fingers now fiddled with the hem of her shirt. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," JJ answered, her blue eyes coming to life the longer she looked at Blake. For a moment she wished she could stay in this precious moment forever. "Because of you."

Blake cocked her head a little as she propped herself up on her elbow and kissed JJ's shoulder blade. The unnerving feeling of Will being in Boston and JJ not knowing he was here crept back up on her. She knew she had to tell JJ sooner rather than later as he expected to see her at some point today.

JJ sensed the change in Blake's demeanour and her eyes narrowed. "Alex, what's going on?"

Blake heaved a sigh and her brown eyes connected with JJ's blue. "When you were kidnapped, Garcia went through your file to contact your next of kin…"

She didn't need to finish that sentence for JJ to understand what she was trying to say. Her face fell and her blue eyes lost a little of their shine. "When will he get here?"

"He's already here."

"What?!"

Blake watched how JJ's face changed from sadness to shock. "He got here yesterday, managed to get on a redeye out of Dulles."

JJ swallowed hard. The whirlwind of emotions that had started inside of her didn't show any signs of settling down. "Does he know?"

Blake shook her head. "No, Hotch only told him that you were seeing someone. He had to tell him because of the unsub's reasons to take you. He never told Will who that person it was."

The calm and peaceful feeling JJ had experienced lying in bed wrapped up in Blake's arms was gone. She felt restless and unsettled. Irritation crept under her skin. She was annoyed at herself for not having changed her file but at the same time she knew it wasn't her fault. She and Blake hadn't gone public with their relationship at the time. Making a change to the file would have drawn Garcia's attention without doubt.

Blake slowly withdrew her arm, allowing JJ to move more freely. The blonde almost immediately slopped out of bed, dressed in a pair of grey shorts and a tank top she had borrowed from Blake the previous night. They fell a little loose around her frame but it somehow suited her. The blonde hair fell freely down her shoulders, framing her face. The clothes barely covered the bruises on her skin and it seemed that some of the bruises had grown bigger and darker overnight.

Blake sat up and the bed sheets pooled at her feet. She followed JJ with her eyes. "What do you want to do?" she asked softly. The blonde stopped in her tracks. "JJ, whatever you think is the right thing to do, I'll do. If you don't want to see him then I'll go tell Hotch to send him back to Washington. If you do want to see him then that's fine too."

"He needs to know," JJ said quietly. The thought of talking to Will about her relationship with Blake weighed heavy on her heart. "Because I want you to spend time with Henry. I don't want to keep hiding this relationship anymore. We're grown adults." Her eyes found Blake's. "I want Henry to get to know you, to know that you're the one who makes his mommy happy now." She looked down at the floor. "I can only hope that Will understands that."

Blake weakly smiled. "Do you want me to come with you?"

JJ shook her head. "No," she said. "This is something I need to do alone." She looked up. "But thank you."

"No need to thank me," Blake said and patted the mattress. She'd glanced at the alarm clock and was surprised at the time. She felt like she'd slept forever when in fact ut had only been a few hours. "Now come back to bed. It's still early."

"Alex, it's almost nine o'clock." JJ rolled her eyes.

"That is early!"

"You're impossible; you know that, don't you?" JJ said with a smile as she climbed back into the bed and wrapped the sheets around her. Her body ached and the bruising on her back was sore. Her muscles protested against most movements but she bit the pain away. She rested her head against Blake's shoulders and relaxed when she felt the older woman's fingers thread her hair.

Blake smiled. "Yes, I know," she answered as she kissed the top of JJ's head. "But you don't mind."

"How did you even get through the Academy?" JJ asked, raising an eyebrow in question. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "Or don't I want to know?"

"My lips are sealed."

"Now there's a first." JJ grinned as she pushed herself up to kiss Blake.

The sound of a phone vibrating interrupted them and Blake reached around on the bedside table looking for the device. She picked it up, checked the caller ID and saw Hotch flash across the screen. She sat up as she answered.

"Hey, Hotch."

"How's JJ?"

Blake looked down at the blonde woman beside her. "She's fine," she answered, smiling a little. "What's the news on our unsub?"

"BPD got a full confession out of him last night and early this morning," Hotch replied. "Rossi mentioned going for breakfast at this place around the corner from the hotel. Apparently they do great coffee."

He extended the invitation without literally saying the words but Blake could read between the lines. "Coffee sounds fantastic," she said as she looked back at JJ. The blonde nodded. "We'll meet you down in the lobby in twenty minutes." She hung up, threw the phone somewhere on the bed and leant in, capturing JJ's lips with her own.

"Come on," she whispered when she felt JJ's hands begin to sneak underneath her shirt. "They're waiting for us."

JJ smiled as she kicked the sheets away from herself and watched as Blake walked around the room, peeling her shirt away from her skin and rummaging around in her bag for something to wear. She couldn't take her eyes of the other woman. She was drawn in, like a moth to a flame. This was the woman who made her heart beat faster, who made her feel alive and happy at the same time.

It didn't matter what Will had to say. JJ was already happy and nothing was going to change that.


	11. Chapter 11

Blake watched as JJ got out of the black SUV. Freshly showered and smelling of the hotel's standard issue shampoo, she looked ready to face the world but Blake knew that behind the profiler's mask, JJ was hiding her turmoil inside. They'd pulled up outside the precinct where they had all gathered the previous night to organise the search for JJ, the same precinct where they had started of the search for the unsub. It was here that JJ had agreed to meet Will after having breakfast with the rest of the team.

JJ turned around when she felt Blake's eyes in her back and flashed a smile. It reflected confidence but she also knew that Blake could see through her façade.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" Blake asked as she lowered the window.

JJ nodded. "Yeah," she answered as she pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "I'll be fine. I can't put this off any longer. I owe it to him." Her blue eyes found Blake's brown and she felt her heart swell with pride. They had come so far. Further than she had realised until this moment. "And I owe it to you."

"Ok."

Blake smiled too. She couldn't deny she was nervous. A large part of her wanted to be there when JJ talked to Will. It wasn't jealousy. It was her instinct to protect JJ from any more hurt. She wanted to support her, be there at her side, but she understood that this was something JJ had to done alone. This was a part of another life; a life she was ready to leave behind.

Blake started the engine of the car. "I'll be right around the corner."

JJ's smile grew wider as she picked up the nervousness in Blake's voice. "I know."

She watched as Blake drove off, disappearing around the corner. They had agreed Blake would wait for her to come back out and they'd return to the hotel together to get their bags before meeting the rest of the team at Logan for their flight back to Washington. She was ready to leave and, although she wouldn't admit this out loud, she hoped no case would see them go back to Boston for some time. This town had changed her life in more ways than she had ever considered possible and although it had all turned out for the better so far, JJ wasn't sure she was actually happy about it.

With her hands still in her pockets she walked into the precinct building, checked in with the uniformed officer behind the desk and crossed the lobby to the elevator. She pressed the button for the Homicide department and heaved a sigh as the doors slid shut. Her heart hammered against her ribcage with such ferocity that it felt it was about to break free from her body.

She avoided looking at herself in the mirror. She didn't want to be reminded of the bruises left behind by her ordeal. Although Blake said that they were marks of strength and victory, JJ didn't see them that way. They symbolised weakness and failure to her. The failure to have recognised danger when it was right in front of her and the weakness that had crept up on her down in the basement. So until the doors of the elevator opened again, JJ stared down at the floor and quickly stepped out onto the department floor.

She followed the corridor and pushed open the double doors leading to the Homicide bullpen. There, siting at one of the detective's desks was Will and his eyes met hers across the length of the room the moment she walked in. She saw the relief in his eyes and felt her own drift away, severing the eye contact. Suddenly she understood that his desperation to see her was not just because he wanted to make sure she was allright.

"JJ!" Will said when she reached the desk and he wrapped his arms around her in an unexpected hug.

She reluctantly hugged him in return, flinching when he pressed too hard against the injuries on her back, but by the time he had let go of her and looked into her eyes, there was not a hint of pain to be seen. Instead he was confronted by a pair of distant blue eyes that didn't reflect the same emotions he experienced. She watched as his face fell and realisation kicked in.

"We need to talk," she said and did her best to keep the hollow echo out of her voice.

He sensed her rejection and his features hardened. "So I gathered."

She went ahead and he followed her to one of the interrogation rooms. JJ made sure to close the blinds after she entered the room and didn't turn around to look at Will until she heard the soft click of the door falling shut. It sent a cold shiver down her spine and she fought against the dark demons roaring in the back of her mind. She kept her back turned towards the man she had married only two years ago and heard a chair scrape across the floor. Will had sat down.

"What is there to say?"

His words echoed around the empty room and were followed by silence. JJ didn't know what to say in return. She had no answer for him. Not one that would answer his question; no an answer that would make all of this any easier to deal with. There was no way to make this any less painful.

She slowly turned around and found him sitting at the table, his hands folded in his lap. He looked so tired and had aged so much it seemed. Or perhaps it was just the brutal and unforgiving light in this room. She saw lines she had never seen before and there were dark rings around his eyes. The longer she looked the less she saw of the man she had married. She wasn't so sure she still knew him and there had been plenty of moments where she wondered if she had ever known him at all.

"How are you feeling?" Will tried a different way to initiate the conversation.

She briefly met his gaze. He tried to his despair behind his hard police officer stare. It worked for most people but she had learnt to see past it over the years. She tried to smile but it never reached her eyes. "Better." She rubbed the back of her head. "In a couple of weeks the bruises will have healed. Hotch says I can go back on active duty then."

She'd opened the door and was waiting for him to make his move. Only seconds went by before he took his chance.

"That's not all Hotch said."

She focused her gaze on what looked like a coffee stain on the wall. "I know."

"He said the unsub took you because he believed you had a secret. He believed you to be lying." Will's voice trembled. She couldn't identify if it was hurt or anger but she recognised the emotions bottled up inside of him. "When I asked Hotch what you could possibly be hiding he told me that you…" He didn't finish his sentence.

She finished it for him. "That I was seeing someone else."

"How long?"

"Almost six months."

His fist hit the table unexpectedly and the sound made her jump. "While we were still together?!"

"No!" she snapped, her blue eyes suddenly blazing. "We haven't been together for a long time, Will. We've been living in the same house but we haven't been together. We stopped talking. Eventually we even stopped being the people we once were. The only thing that changed is that I moved out and filed for divorce. But we lost our way a long time ago."

He stared at her, anger and hurt flickering behind his eyes. "Why?" he wanted to know. "Why, JJ?"

"Life changed, Will," JJ said softly. "First I lost Emily. I never had a friend quite like her." She swallowed the lump in her throat away. "It was like losing my sister all over again. And then Erin…" She gnawed at her lower lip and turned away from him. "Somewhere along the way we drifted apart, Will. I needed you to guide me through all the hurt and you weren't there. I'm not saying I was the perfect wife because I know I wasn't. I am not sure I ever was. You didn't ask, I didn't tell."

"I thought we were happy," Will said. "I thought we had everything we could ever have wanted."

"Happy?" JJ echoed. "Will, look back at our relationship. For it to work we both needed to be in it the full hundred percent and I don't think I was, not towards the end. I got pregnant when you were still in New Orleans. You gave up your job for me and Henry but you always resented having to do that. You hate my job. We got married because we both came close to death. I realised I didn't want to be alone ever again." She shook her head. "I let my own fear guide me and in doing so I ruined both our lives."

Will looked at her in a way he had never done before. It was almost as if he truly saw her for the first time. "So you're saying that you never believed in our relationship, our marriage, at all and you're just giving up?"

"I'm not giving up. I'm walking away from something that wasn't going to bring me happiness. Come on, Will, we both know we haven't been happy for some time. What's the point in trying to hold onto something that's beyond saving? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life being miserable?"

He stood up from his chair and took a step in her direction. When he noticed JJ stepped away he held still. "JJ, I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'm sorry if I wasn't the husband you needed me to be."

JJ watched Will as his eyes searched her face, looking for a sign of hope that maybe she would take back her words. "I don't think we were ever the best for each other. We tried and we failed. It happens. People make wrong choices but that doesn't mean that it was a bad thing. Even wrong choices can have beautiful outcomes. Look at Henry! He is still our son and I am doing this because of him. I don't want him growing up in a house where his parents don't love each other. He is our son and deserves more than that."

Will turned away from her and began pacing the other side of the interrogation room, clenching and relaxing his fists. She could see the weight of the world resting on his shoulders and felt guilt well up in her stomach. This was hard but she knew this was the right thing to do, for them and for Henry.

He shot her a sideways glance. "Hotch never said who it was."

She felt her body stiffen. "Because he doesn't know."

"Bullshit, JJ. He's a profiler. They're all profilers. Of course they know. You talk to them more than you ever talked to me."

JJ resisted telling him that nobody in the team had known who it was until Blake had told them. She had managed to deceive them both. Some of the smartest minds in the FBI had been fooled by her lies. It wasn't something she was proud of but it confirmed her belief that Will didn't know her as well as he thought he did.

"They didn't know," she said softly and he looked up in surprise. "Will, believe me when I say that nobody in the team knew."

"Nobody?" His eyes narrowed a little and she could see the anger in his eyes. "Come on, JJ. I think we both know that's not exactly true now, is it?"

She cocked her head a little. "Exactly what are you implying?"

"It's one of them, isn't it?"

"Will…"

He raised his hands. "I knew it! Which one is it, JJ? Is it Rossi? You always said he was a bit of a womanizer. Did he finally get to you? Or maybe Morgan? Reid?"

"Reid?" JJ snorted at the thought of Reid even bringing up the courage to approach her whilst knowing she was married. Spencer was like her little brother. The way he was talking to her now made her not want to tell him it was Blake but she knew she didn't have a choice because of Henry. She wanted Blake and her son to spend time together. "Really, Will? You're being ridiculous!"

He stared at her. "So that just leaves Hotch." His eyes widened a little when he saw her jap drop. "It's him, isn't it?"

"No." Her blue eyes found his and she fixed him with a piercing stare. There was no other way around this and although this was the one thing she had hoped to avoid, she didn't see another way out. "It's Blake."

"What?"

"It's Blake."

He stared at her, dumbfounded. When he spoke his voice was so much softer, as if the shock had erased all the anger from his body. "Blake?"

JJ's eyes fluttered shut. "This was not the way I wanted to tell you. I'd hoped we could talk about this as two grown adults but we still ended up fighting, the same way we always do." She peered up at him through her eyelashes. "I'm sorry. I didn't want you to find out like this. You deserved better."

She took a few steps towards the door and waited, wondering if he was going to stop her. He didn't move and she closed the distance between herself and the exit. She grabbed hold of the door handle and stepped out of the interrogation room. She turned in the doorway and looked at her husband.

"Please," she said softly, "sign the paperwork, Will."

He looked up. His eyes had lost their shine and he looked lost. "Blake?!" he whispered. She didn't answer, just held his gaze for as long as she could bear. He then looked away and fumbled with the golden wedding band on his left hand. He removed it. "The paperwork will be on your lawyer's desk by the end of the week."

"Thank you." Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke. She hung her head. "Will, I'm sorry."

As she went to walk away he called her back. "What about Henry?" he wanted to know.

"I would like him to meet her," JJ answered. "Eventually." She swallowed hard. "I understand if you need time and I don't want to do this without your support but Alex is a part of my life now. I want her to be part of Henry's too. Despite what happened between us, I don't want him missing out on all the people that love him."

Will just nodded. "Goodbye, JJ."

She left the door to the interrogation room open and slowly walked away. "Goodbye, Will."

JJ crossed the bull pen and walked out of the Homicide Department with tears burning behind her eyes. She still didn't look at herself in the mirror as she rode the elevator down to the lobby and by the time she walked out of the building, she felt the tears sliding down her cheeks.

She found Blake parked in the car park and climbed in the passenger seat, relaxing a little when she felt the brunettes hand on her knee.

"You okay?" Blake whispered softly as she brushed a tear away and JJ nodded.

"I will be," she answered and covered Blake's hand with her own. "I just want to go home." Blue eyes found brown. "With you."


	12. Chapter 12

Boarding the jet felt like closing a book. JJ was the last one to climb the steps and walk into the small plane. Her eyes almost immediately sought out Blake who was sitting in the back of the plane on a row of three seats. JJ crossed the small space and sat down beside her before resting her head against her shoulder.

"Going home never felt so good," she said softly as Blake's fingers threaded her hair. Her muscles relaxed and the dull ache she felt in her back slowly subsided. The painkillers she took just before boarding the jet helped but being close to Blake really made her feel better.

Blake smiled to herself. She couldn't agree more. "You're right about that," she whispered into JJ's hair, leaving an absentminded kiss somewhere just above her ear. "Try and sleep, Jayj. We'll be home soon."

Her eyes drifted around the small plane. Morgan sat the next row over, already wearing his headphones. She could tell from his body language that he wasn't entirely relaxed and, after she looked a little harder, she noticed his eyes weren't fully shut. He wasn't watching them directly but she could feel his gaze anyway. Her smile only grew wider when she noticed he grinned. He knew she'd seen him.

Reid sat next to Rossi and Hotch sat across them. The latter was finishing up paperwork and Reid had opened up a book. He hadn't looked up since they got on the plane but this wasn't unusual. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal and Blake liked it that way. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same.

"You know we're probably going to have to face Hotch when we come back," JJ whispered.

At that same moment the plane's engines kicked in and the loud noise filled the jet. It began to move; driving its way across the tarmac towards the take-off strip at Logan airport. The engines got louder as the jet sped up and JJ lifted her head up far enough to see the world rushing by outside the small window. Seconds later the landing gear lost contact with the ground and her stomach did a summersault as they began climbing.

Blake turned to look at JJ. "What do you mean, we'll have to face Hotch?" she asked softly.

"Fraternization," JJ said with a little smile. "It isn't exactly something the Bureau promotes."

"But they let Rossi and Erin work together," Blake said as she nestled herself a little closer to JJ and picked up the blanket she'd taken out of the luggage locker above her head when she first sat down. She draped it across JJ and a little over herself and sighed contently when JJ's arm snaked around her waist.

"Most of them didn't know about them."

"We did and we chose not to say anything." Blake's fingers ghosted across JJ's arm. "I don't think we've got anything to worry about."

"I know," JJ mused as her eyes slowly closed. Tiredness took hold even though it was only early afternoon. The painkillers were slowly lulling her to sleep. "I was just trying to pull your leg."

Blake didn't answer. Instead she just moved a little so that JJ could lie down, her read resting in her lap. Her fingers ran through blonde locks and she rested her head against the wall behind her. The images of the last few days flashed before her eyes and she knew she would be seeing them for some time longer. It was the brain's way of coping with what had happened.

"Blake?"

She looked up to find Morgan looking back at her. He had removed his headphones and briefly glanced at JJ as if to reassure himself that she was asleep. The slow and steady rising and falling of the blonde profiler's chest confirmed that she was indeed no longer awake. His eyes then found Blake's again and he shuffled in his seat.

"I owe you an apology."

She furrowed her brow. "Morgan, whatever for?"

"For the way I reacted when you told Hotch about you and JJ. I shouldn't have walked off like that."

"Didn't we already talk about this?" she asked, letting him know that she didn't hold a grudge. She didn't blame him for his reaction. She and JJ had lied to them for almost six months and she knew that the team was sensitive to secrets after the whole thing with Emily. "Morgan, we're good."

"She's like my little sister," Morgan said, his eyes drifting back to JJ. "When we first found out Emily wasn't really dead, I couldn't believe she had actually lied to my face for that length of time. She walked into that waiting room in the hospital and told us Emily didn't make it of the table. She watched us cry even though she knew Emily was going to be safe in Paris. Now I know she did it to protect Emily and Declan but for a long time I found it hard to look at her and trust her."

"No one blames you for that, Morgan," Blake said softly. The one thing this team relied on was trust. Every day they put their lives into each other's hands. Her eyes drifted towards Reid. He hadn't said much since this whole thing began and she knew he had been the one to take JJ's deceit the hardest first time round. She looked back at Morgan. He'd seen her glance over at Reid. "How's he doing?"

"He'll be allright. You know Reid. He doesn't like change. He doesn't understand why people aren't always honest," Morgan answered, although Reid himself had kept secrets from them in the past. "Don't think he isn't going to be accepting, Blake. Reid will be just fine. He just needs time to process everything that happened."

Blake couldn't suppress a smile. "I think that goes for all of us."

Morgan looked back at JJ, now soundly asleep in Blake's lap. "How is she?"

"All things considered, she's doing better than I thought," Blake admitted. "She just wants to go home and see Henry and I can't say I blame her. It's been a tough couple of days."

"You did good, Blake," Morgan complimented her and he could see the gratefulness fill her eyes. "If it had been someone I loved, I'm not sure I would have been able to focus the way you did." He leant back in his seat and fumbled with his headphones. "What are you going to do now?"

"Well, JJ told Will and I guess that went okay." Blake took a deep breath. "Right now I just want to take her home, pick up Henry and sleep for two days. After that, we'll see. This case may be behind us but we will have to deal with the divorce and the difficulties of bringing Henry into this relationship. It isn't just about me and her anymore."

"It's going to be allright," Morgan said as he put his headphones back on and the music filled his ears. "I know it."

She didn't doubt him. She knew things would turn out allright eventually. Somehow her life always had a habit of doing this. She was used to running away from things. She'd run away from Kansas City after her mother and Danny died. Leaving people was what she did, turning her back on those who cared for her. But this had been different. She didn't walk away from JJ. When she needed someone, she had turned to JJ looking for shelter and comfort. JJ had done the same. Even in their darkest and most lonely hour, they had found another person. She didn't want to run anymore. She had finally come home.

~()~

The jet touched down in Washington within no time and they left the plane and climbed into the waiting SUV's. Morgan drove the one, Hotch the other and in convoy they made their way back to Quantico. Blake and JJ sat in the backseat. JJ had only woken up as the plane touched down and the sleep had done her some good. She looked and felt brighter.

Morgan's cell phone rang and he put it on speaker. Hotch's voice filled the car.

"When we get back, leave your paperwork on your desks. It can wait. Use the next forty eight hours to catch up on some sleep."

A sense of relief ripped through the SUV as people relished in the thought of two whole days of uninterrupted sleep, relaxation and a chance to be at home. They all loved their jobs but with the things they saw on a daily basis, and especially after this case, some time away from the BAU was much needed. There was only so much any person could take when it came to the depravity of mankind.

When they eventually pulled into a parking spot outside the FBI building, JJ was reminded just how different her life had been a few days ago. She'd run into Morgan the morning she came into work ready to start this case. Earlier that same morning Blake had left her apartment. Their life had been a secret then. She never could have expected things would turn out the way they had and as she got out of the SUV and met Morgan's gaze, she realised he had thought the same thing.

The team walked into the building and took two different elevators to get to the BAU. The doors swung open as a soft 'ping' echoed through the small entrance lobby and they were greeted by Garcia. She was waiting for them, anxiety etched across her face. When she laid eyes on JJ she ran towards the blonde profiler and enveloped her in a tight but loving embrace.

"I'm so glad to see you," she whispered, tears glistening behind her glasses.

When Garcia finally let go of her, JJ smiled. "It's good to see you too, Penelope."

"Where's my hug, baby girl?" Morgan asked, arching an eyebrow in amusement.

"You didn't get kidnapped by some crazy ass psycho." Garcia looked back at JJ. Her usual behaviour crept back in. "I'm so sorry I called Will, JJ. If I had known… I didn't mean to…" Her eyes nervously flashed over JJ's face. "I wouldn't have done it if…"

"It's ok," JJ said, covering Garcia's hand with her own and briefly looking at Blake. "You didn't know."

Garcia's eyes narrowed a little and she stepped forward, wrapping an arm around JJ and the other around Blake. "You're right. I didn't know." She looked from the blonde to the brunette and back, a beaming smile on her face. JJ and Blake looked down, a light blush creeping onto JJ's cheeks. "Time to change that. Tell me everything."

Filling in Garcia wasn't like telling the rest of the team about their relationship. Garcia interrupted them every so often, asking questions that didn't have anything to do with the case they had just worked. She was more interested in the emotional part of it. It didn't feel invasive. It felt genuine. Garcia was happy and that happiness radiated across the whole of the BAU.

Two hours after arriving at the BAU they finally got to go home. Blake offered to drive and JJ accepted. She didn't feel like driving her own car. She was tired and the thought of going home filled her with longing. Her car would be fine left in the parking lot for the next two days so she followed Blake to her car and got into the passenger seat, dumping her bag at her feet.

"Want me to pick Henry up?" Blake asked as she turned the key and the car's engine came to life.

"Yes," JJ answered, her blue eyes fixed on Blake. She couldn't wait to see her son. But there was something else she wanted. She wanted the two best things in her life to be together in the same place. From this day onwards, things were going to be different. "Would you mind if me and him stayed at yours for the next two days?"

Blake looked up, surprise etched across her face. She stared at JJ, unsure if she'd heard the blonde correctly. "What?" It sounded like a faded whisper.

"Me and Henry," JJ said, smiling. "Would you mind if we stayed at yours? I really want you to meet him and for him to get to know you." She covered Blake's hand with her own and squeezed it. "There's no time like the present."

Blake smiled. A warm feeling settled in the pit of her stomach and she looked down at JJ's hand covering hers, their fingers entwined. "I'd like that."


	13. Chapter 13

8 weeks later

The music played softly in the background and she hummed along to the tones of Journey's "Open Arms." The kitchen still smelt like lasagne and the dirty dishes were still piled up in the sink, waiting to be washed. Outside darkness had fallen several hours ago and rain lashed against the apartment windows. The sound was monotone yet soothing.

JJ turned to the sink with the intention of switching on the hot water when her gaze drifted from the dirty dishes to the scene in the living room. Her hand hovered in mid-air as her blue eyes fixed on the two people curled up on the couch together. A smile spread across her face and JJ leant against the counter, unable to take her eyes off what was happening in front of her.

Blake and Henry sat together on the couch. Blake had put her legs up but Henry had somehow managed to climb on to and his little blonde head rested against her chest as Blake read him from his new favourite book; the one she had bought him two weeks earlier. JJ had spent every evening reading him the same stories and he loved every minute of it.

She watched her girlfriend and her son together. Blake was a natural with Henry. She knew when to take a step back and let JJ take over as a parent, aware that Henry wasn't her son and that their relationship was still something he had to get used to. But Henry had taken to her from the moment JJ introduced them.

It had been eight weeks since the ordeal in Boston and life had somehow managed to take on some kind of normal form. The first two nights she and Henry slept at Blake's place. Henry had loved it. Blake told him to bring as many toys as he liked and he had accepted that offer in every way possible and managed to make Blake's house look like he had just raided the nearest Toys R Us store. Blake had loved every minute of it and JJ had enjoyed watching her play with Henry on the floor of her living room.

Their relationship didn't influence their jobs as much as she had thought. The moment they walked out of the door in the morning they slipped into their roles as profilers without even thinking twice. They were different people when they were at the BAU. They had to be in order to keep the demons and the darkness out of their personal lives. There was no room for it now that they had started to build a life together.

"Hey, I said I'd do the dishes!" Blake said when she became aware of JJ looking at her and noticed the blonde stood next to the sink. "You cooked."

"It's okay," JJ smiled as she let her eyes drift from Blake's face to that of her son and back. Henry leant lazily against Blake's body and JJ couldn't quite see his face. "You seem to be having your hands full anyway."

Blake arched an eyebrow. "I think he's asleep."

"I guess you'd better not move then," JJ grinned. "Poor little man. He must be worn out from our trip to the park."

Trips to the park were probably their favourite activity during the weekends she didn't have to work. They would have a lazy morning before getting breakfast at one of the many small coffee bars close to the park. Somehow Blake always knew the best ones. Today they'd spent the day walking around the park, feeding the ducks and Henry had spent almost two hours playing with the other kids in the playground while they watched, Blake's hand never letting go of hers.

"Want me to put him to bed?" Blake asked as she shifted herself a little bit, careful not to wake Henry.

"Just take off his jeans. He can sleep with his t-shirt still on," JJ said and watched as Blake managed to stand up. She bent down and scooped Henry up into her arms. He didn't even open his eyes and remained asleep, his arms draped across Blake's shoulders.

Blake carried the sleeping boy across the apartment to his bedroom and JJ turned back to the sink. She switched on the tap and watched as the water fill up. Just as she switched the taps off she felt two strong arms snake around her waist and Blake's warm lips pressed against the back of her neck. JJ's eyes fluttered shut and she leant back a little.

"He didn't even move," Blake whispered and JJ turned around, now trapped between Blake's body and the kitchen counter. Blue eyes found brown.

She tucked a strand of hair behind Blake's hair. "He likes you, Alex."

"Lord only knows why," Blake grinned.

JJ's eyes darkened several shades. "Because he sees the same thing I do."

"And what exactly is that?" Amusement was etched across Blake's face.

JJ leant in and brushed lips against Blake's. She felt the other woman respond almost immediately. "A wonderful woman who makes me very happy."

Blake moved in for another kiss when JJ pulled away, grabbing a firmer hold of the younger woman this time. She pulled her closer, as close as she could. Moments like this she cherished. After the events in Boston she just knew how precious they were. It had reminded her never to take anything for granted, even if it seems like life is going just fine. Danger could be lurking around every corner.

"Did you hear from Will?" she asked when they finally parted and she rested her forehead against JJ's.

"He's picking Henry up tomorrow morning at eleven," JJ answered and when Blake furrowed her brow she quickly added, "Hotch wants us in for the early Monday morning briefing, remember? I won't make it to drop him off at Jessie's so Will offered to come and get him."

"Will he be allright with me still being here?" she wanted to know.

Will hadn't exactly been happy with the news about their relationship and in the beginning he ha demanded that Blake wasn't at the apartment when he picked Henry up. He couldn't forbid JJ from having her around when Henry was spending most of his time with his mother but it was his way of being awkward and tryin to get some control. JJ had listened to him for the first week but when he started talking about counselling or perhaps going out for a cup of coffee, she had said that those things weren't what she wanted from him. She wanted him to be a good father to Henry, for their relationship as father and son to remain as strong as it had always been, but there was no chance of them getting back together again.

"Any news on the paperwork?" Blake asked. "You said your lawyer received it weeks ago."

JJ grinned. "And we both have enough experience with the judicial system to know that even the simplest of things sometimes take forever." She let her fingers dance across Blake's forearm. "And as for Will demanding you're not here when he picks Henry up… he can stick that where the sun doesn't shine." Her eyebrows knowingly shot up. "Besides, I don't want you to leave."

"Don't you?" Blake feigned innocence. Her hands dropped from the small of JJ's back to the curve of her buttock. "And why is that?"

"You may find out…" JJ leant in and quickly pecked the corner of Blake's mouth. The glint in her eye said more than words ever could. "If you help me do the dishes."

~()~

She woke to the feeling of Blake's fingers trailing up and down her arm. The bedroom was still dark and JJ squinted so she could see the numbers on the alarm clock. 05.57. There were three minutes left till the alarm went off. Monday mornings at the BAU were an 8 am start t catch up on the cases they had been working before the weekend or new ones that had come in while they were off.

JJ rolled over to find Blake looking at her.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

"A while," Blake answered as she moved a little closer to JJ under the duvet. Her bare legs touched JJ's before snaking her arms around her naked girlfriend's body and pulling her closer. "I just felt like watching you for a little while."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're weird?" JJ grinned in between kisses.

Blake couldn't help but smile at that comment. "I chase serial killers for a living. Of course I'm weird."

At that same moment the alarm went off and JJ reached over to turn it off. She heaved a sigh as she realisation that the safety and comfort of the weekend were behind them. As much as she loved her job, there wasn't anything in this world she loved more than spending time with Henry and Blake. She turned her head to look at the brunette beside her and smiled. This was the sight she woke up to most mornings and it made her happy.

"I guess we'd better get a move on," Blake said when she recognised the familiar stumbling sound in the room a little further down the hall. Henry was already up.

JJ reluctantly agreed and kicked the duvet away from herself. The cold gust of wind made goose bumps appear on her skin and she shivered. "Yeah, I guess we should." Her eyes found Blake's. "You want the first shower? I'll get Henry dressed and will jump in after you."

She grabbed a pair of sweatpants and at-shirt on her way to the bedroom door and threw them on before walking into her son's room and finding him standing next to his bed. He met her with a beaming smile and JJ scooped him up in her arms, swung him through the air and put him back down.

"Ok, big guy," she said, still grinning. "Time to have a wash, brush your teeth and get your clothes on, allright? Daddy will be here in half an hour."

It took her twenty minutes to get him sorted but Henry cooperated well this morning, unlike most mornings. He wasn't much of a morning person. In that respect he was a lot like Blake, JJ thought as she pulled the sweater over his head and helped him tie the laces to his sneakers. She brushed his hair and followed him into the kitchen to give him a piece of toast and some milk before sending him off with Will.

The knock on the door startled her and her eyes snapped up to the clock. Will was a little early. She sighed as she walked to the front door, double checked through the spy-hole it was indeed her soon to be ex-husband and removed the chain before turning the two double locks. She then opened the door and looked up at him.

"Hi."

He noticed she wasn't dressed yet. "Hey."

"Wanna come in?" she asked, stepping aside to make room for him to file into the kitchen.

Will stepped into the kitchen and Henry, who had just about finished his toast, ran from the table to wrap his arms around his father's neck. JJ watched with a smile as Will swung him around several times, the same way she had done earlier that morning, before putting him down and ruffling his blonde hair.

"Go and grab your bag," JJ told her son and Henry shot off to his bedroom.

"Good weekend?" Will asked, his eyes drifting around the small but cosy apartment.

"Yeah," JJ answered, following his eyes. "We went to the park yesterday and he crashed out on the couch and on Saturday we went to the movies." She took a step in Will's direction. "Thanks for picking him up early."

"It's allright," he answered, his eyes meeting JJ's. "I've got the day off so I was thinking about getting him a haircut and going to the mall."

JJ smiled. "Sounds like fun."

"Jayj, if you want that shower you're going to have to hurry. Garcia just sent a text asking us to…"

Blake's voice faltered when she walked into the living room, her hair still wet. She was still buttoning up her shirt when her eyes found Will and their gazes locked. Almost immediately the tension in the room shifted and JJ could feel it begin to rise. Almost instinctively she turned to Will and his eyes now snapped from Blake to her.

"You don't get to say anything about this," JJ reminded him. She suddenly sounded sharp and she fixed him with a stare she normally only used for suspects. "You don't have the right to tell me what I can and can't do. Alex has every right to be here. I know it's hard but I suggest you get used to that."

Will's features had hardened but he looked back up at Blake and swallowed the hard lump in his throat away. "Hi."

Blake felt herself relax. They didn't have to be best friends. She didn't even expect them to be friends but they would have to be civilised for the sake of Henry. "Hi."

Henry emerged from his bedroom and ran back over to his dad. He grabbed his hand and started dragging him to the door.

"He must have heard you when you said the word 'mall'," JJ said as she opened the door for the two of them.

Henry turned around before stepping outside and waved. "Bye, Alex."

She waved back, a smile reaching from ear to ear. "Bye, bye, kiddo."

JJ looked at Will. "Thank you," she said, her eyes kinder this time. "I know this is hard for you but I appreciate that you're trying." She put a hand on his arm. "You're a good man, Will."

He just smiled. It didn't reach his eyes and she could see the sadness there. He looked down at his son. "Ok, time to tell mommy goodbye now. You'll see her on Thursday."

JJ hugged and kissed her son for as long as he let her before wriggling out of her arms. She watched him and his father walk down the hallway and slowly closed the door. Blake still stood in the middle of the living room and their gazes locked.

"Jayj, I'm sorry, I didn't realise he was already here."

"Don't worry about it," JJ answered as she crossed the room and kissed Blake on her cheek. "He's going to have to get used to this eventually." She took a small step back. "What was that about Garcia texting you?"

"Round table ASAP," Blake answered and showed her phone. "I guess we've got another one." She watched as JJ started for the bedroom. "What a life we live, eh?"

JJ turned around in the doorway and her eyes found Blake's across the length of the room. Her blue eyes lit up and she smiled.

"Coming home to you every night and keeping serial killers of the streets," she said. "I love my life and I wouldn't have it any other way."


End file.
